The Buffalo Bills finished their picks in the 2021 NFL Draft on Saturday and we didn’t know what the next step would be for them. The regular-season schedule isn’t released until next week and we still don’t know about training camp, but the offseason schedule was announced by the NFL on Thursday.
- Rookie camp: May 14-16
- OTA workouts: May 24-25, May 27, June 1-2, June 4, June 7-8, June 10-11
- Mandatory minicamp: June 15-17
COVID-19 restrictions will remain in place for the foreseeable future, including meeting in large open areas in order to physically distance players, masking in the facilities, no social gatherings in or outside the building, no interacting in-person with the media, and only 15 players in the weight room at a time.
NFL teams were told to offer the coronavirus vaccine to all rookies attending rookie minicamp and that will likely be extended to veterans at OTAs and mandatory minicamp. Unvaccinated players will need to be COVID tested every day while players with the vaccine are only tested once per week.
The NFLPA has urged players to not attend optional team workouts this spring and summer (like OTA workouts) due to rising COVID-19 numbers across the country. The NFL clarified on May 5 that teams have no responsibility to pay players if they are injured while away from the team facility.
“As we have made clear throughout bargaining, the COVID status in the country is as perilous as it was at this point last year; a number of players recently tested positive at team facilities; COVID weekly positive rates are as high, if not higher than, at this point last offseason; and NFL players who contracted COVID last season can become infected again,” wrote the union to players around the league last month.
The Buffalo Bills were not among the teams to have players announce a boycott of offseason workouts.