The most encouraging thing about Michael Hoecht on the first day of Bills training camp was that he opened camp without an injury designation.
Buffalo head coach Joe Brady made the announcement during his camp opening press conference.
"He did an incredible job with his rehab," he said to the press. "He wants to take every single rep today."
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Roughly nine months after rupturing his Achilles against the Kansas City Chiefs in early November. He went through individual drills at St. John Fisher on Wednesday morning. For a player coming off the single most brutal soft-tissue injury in football, showing up on the grass in July with a clean tag is the milestone.
Hoecht will be limited, and head coach Joe
Brady was blunt about why: it's to protect Hoecht from Hoecht.
"Some of it is always just holding him back from himself," Brady added. "But he's going to be out there in team, and I'm excited to see him just continue to progress."
He is the kind of edge-setter who plays every rep like it's a fourth-quarter run stop, which is exactly the trait that makes him useful in Jim Leonhard's front — and exactly the trait that gets a rehabbing Achilles into trouble in a padless July practice.
The reps will be rationed anyway, providing guardrails that align with his progress towards regular season gameplay.Hoecht's value in this defense is his competitive drive on every down and positional flexibility. He can set an edge, reduce inside on passing downs, and play multiple alignments in the same series — the exact interchangeability Leonhard's scheme 3-4 hybrid front is built for.
On a defensive unit that now has additions to the pass rush in Bradley Chubb and Mike Danna off the edge and drafting T.J. Parker, Hoecht is the piece who lets Leonhard disguise which of them is actually rushing.
Hoecht signed with Buffalo last year as a free agent out of Los Angeles, then missed the first six games on a PED suspension. He got roughly a half-season of football before the Achilles ended it in Kansas City. Buffalo has only seen a preview of the version of Michael Hoecht it paid for.
With the return to the field, he'll have a chance to to do just that for a full season if he remains healthy.
This article originally appeared on Bills Wire: Injury update: Bills' Michael Hoecht post-Achilles tear at training camp
