The Bills have never won a Super Bowl. They haven’t even been to the Super Bowl for 30 years.
That’s not stopping coach Sean McDermott from talking about it. And from literally visualizing it — for himself and the team.
Via Ben Volin of the Boston Globe, the team’s indoor practice facility has a giant banner between one of the goalposts with the image of a Lombardi Trophy on it.
The players haven’t seen it yet, since training camp is happening off site, at St. John Fisher University.
“It’s just a daily reminder of what we’re here to do and what we’re trying to accomplish,” McDermott told Volin. “It’s just really a standard for us, what we’re trying to accomplish every year. And more than anything internally, it’s to keep us focused on that through the course of the season, when that can get clouded with the journey.”
Last year, the Bills faced unreasonably high expectations to return to the Super Bowl and win it. This year, they’re still trying to downplay the obvious frustrations displayed by receiver Stefon Diggs during an embarrassing 27-10 home loss to the Bengals in the postseason.
Maybe that’s the reason for keeping an image of the trophy visible at all times in the practice facility. It could help to keep everyone properly focused on the mission, and to get them to ignore anything that could cloud that objective.
“We’re here to win a world championship,” McDermott said. “It’s trying to keep our vision, and one of the goals that we have as an organization, in front of us at all times.”
Still, they seem to be farther from the destination than they were a year ago. The conference now contains many great teams, and the difficulty of the schedule for the four teams in the AFC East could mean that only one of them will make it to the postseason.