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ORCHARD PARK - In the moment, fully understanding what had just happened to him and knowing that his 2025 season, his first with the Buffalo Bills, was done after less than two games, Michael Hoecht was heartbroken.
When he went down in the fourth quarter of the thrilling 28-21 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs at Highmark Stadium, he knew it wasn't good. And as soon as he made it back to the bench his worst fears were confirmed as the team doctor minced no words: Torn Achilles.
“Honestly, when I got to the sideline and the doc told me, 'Hey, this is going to be a 9-to-12-month thing,' I knew that I was getting ready for the next season,” Hoecht said earlier this week after participating on a limited basis in the Bills' mini-camp session.
Yet even after hearing that devastating diagnosis, Hoecht refused to get carted into the locker room. He wanted to stay on the bench for the rest of the game and cheer on his teammates, and the reaction on social media was one of overwhelming positivity.
That's not what Hoecht was going for, but he appreciated the fans for showering him with love and praise and good wishes during one of his darkest times as a professional athlete.
“I saw the reaction to it,” he said. “I thought they took the cameras off me and it's, 'All right, I'm just going to stay out here and sort of hang out.' And apparently it turned into a good thing. That was fun, and honestly, that’s kind of who I am. I like football and I knew that from that moment, I wasn't playing football for a long time. So I was just going to try and enjoy it as much as I could. It was my first home game. It was my home opener.”
Hoecht has had Nov. 2, 2025, the day he went down, burned into his brain because as you might expect, he has been counting down the months, weeks, days and hours with his goal of returning to action close to the beginning of the initial 9-to-12 month timeline.
When the offseason program began in April he wasn't doing too much beyond conditioning and strength training, but over the past two months he has been ramping up to the point where not only was he working on his own with a trainer on the sideline, he was participating in some of the individual drills in mini-camp.
“You have to try to slow him down, to be honest with you,” coach Joe Brady said. “For anybody who knows Hoecht, if it was up to him he'd play a game right now. He's one of those guys where his greatest strength is also a weakness at this point because he can almost do too much right now, but we have a great plan.”
Obviously, Hoecht is a player the Bills need in top form if they hope to optimize the new Jim Leonhard 3-4 defense. Last year he gave the Bills a glimpse of the player he can be. On just 64 snaps he had five tackles, a forced fumble, eight pressures and two sacks. And then it was over.
“There was seven quarters last year that I felt like the best player in the NFL,” he said with a smile. “But the NFL is not a fairytale. It's one of those things where you can't control all the outcomes, it's not always sunshine and rainbows.”
Hoecht confirmed that he's never dealt with an injury of this time length and yeah, as you might imagine, it has been driving him batty because remember, his Bills career began with a six-game suspension last year.
“This is the longest I've ever spent not playing football and not doing any type of sport,” he said. “Even through high school and early on, it's like you're always on to the next season, on to the next season, so, this has been way too long of a break. I think it's really more like a lesson in persistence. There is a lot of growth that happens when you have something you love like football, and then all of a sudden you can't do it.”
Hoecht is excited to get going because with the Bills switching schemes, he's going back to being a standup outside linebacker, a position he's comfortable playing from his days with the Rams.
“Seven years in, I've pretty much played every position across the front and in the box,” he said. “This is sort of the world I grew up in with Los Angeles, this is sort of that five-down structure, a little bit more coverage, a lot of disguise. Personally, I like this sort of front because I feel like it gives the outside linebackers a bit more creativity.”
Now that the Bills have closed out mini-camp and are now on a seven-week summer vacation, Hoecht hopes to continue making progress in his rehab and if all goes well, he feels confident that he can hit the ground running - literally - when the team reports to St. John Fisher University on July 29.
“After doing enough rehab, you need to start doing things where you don't necessarily know where your feet are going to be,” he said. “You have to re-teach your brain to say, 'I'm bending a corner' and not think, 'left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot,' but actually just do it and be an athlete.
“As far as whether I’m ahead of schedule or not, I don't 100% know. But I know that I feel really good right now. And in rehab … it's almost like having a baby. It's like he's two weeks old, he's four weeks old, he's a month old, he's six months old. You know, it's always like what's that next step that we're taking? No pun intended.”
Sal Maiorana has covered the Buffalo Bills for more than four decades including 37 years as the full-time beat writer/columnist for the D&C. He has written numerous books about the history of the team, and he is also co-host of the BLEAV in Bills podcast/YouTube show. He can be reached at [email protected], and you can follow him on X @salmaiorana and on Bluesky @salmaiorana.bsky.social.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Michael Hoecht injury update and return timeline with Buffalo Bills
Continue reading...
When he went down in the fourth quarter of the thrilling 28-21 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs at Highmark Stadium, he knew it wasn't good. And as soon as he made it back to the bench his worst fears were confirmed as the team doctor minced no words: Torn Achilles.
“Honestly, when I got to the sideline and the doc told me, 'Hey, this is going to be a 9-to-12-month thing,' I knew that I was getting ready for the next season,” Hoecht said earlier this week after participating on a limited basis in the Bills' mini-camp session.
Yet even after hearing that devastating diagnosis, Hoecht refused to get carted into the locker room. He wanted to stay on the bench for the rest of the game and cheer on his teammates, and the reaction on social media was one of overwhelming positivity.
That's not what Hoecht was going for, but he appreciated the fans for showering him with love and praise and good wishes during one of his darkest times as a professional athlete.
“I saw the reaction to it,” he said. “I thought they took the cameras off me and it's, 'All right, I'm just going to stay out here and sort of hang out.' And apparently it turned into a good thing. That was fun, and honestly, that’s kind of who I am. I like football and I knew that from that moment, I wasn't playing football for a long time. So I was just going to try and enjoy it as much as I could. It was my first home game. It was my home opener.”
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Hoecht has had Nov. 2, 2025, the day he went down, burned into his brain because as you might expect, he has been counting down the months, weeks, days and hours with his goal of returning to action close to the beginning of the initial 9-to-12 month timeline.
When the offseason program began in April he wasn't doing too much beyond conditioning and strength training, but over the past two months he has been ramping up to the point where not only was he working on his own with a trainer on the sideline, he was participating in some of the individual drills in mini-camp.
“You have to try to slow him down, to be honest with you,” coach Joe Brady said. “For anybody who knows Hoecht, if it was up to him he'd play a game right now. He's one of those guys where his greatest strength is also a weakness at this point because he can almost do too much right now, but we have a great plan.”
Obviously, Hoecht is a player the Bills need in top form if they hope to optimize the new Jim Leonhard 3-4 defense. Last year he gave the Bills a glimpse of the player he can be. On just 64 snaps he had five tackles, a forced fumble, eight pressures and two sacks. And then it was over.
“There was seven quarters last year that I felt like the best player in the NFL,” he said with a smile. “But the NFL is not a fairytale. It's one of those things where you can't control all the outcomes, it's not always sunshine and rainbows.”
Hoecht confirmed that he's never dealt with an injury of this time length and yeah, as you might imagine, it has been driving him batty because remember, his Bills career began with a six-game suspension last year.
“This is the longest I've ever spent not playing football and not doing any type of sport,” he said. “Even through high school and early on, it's like you're always on to the next season, on to the next season, so, this has been way too long of a break. I think it's really more like a lesson in persistence. There is a lot of growth that happens when you have something you love like football, and then all of a sudden you can't do it.”
Hoecht is excited to get going because with the Bills switching schemes, he's going back to being a standup outside linebacker, a position he's comfortable playing from his days with the Rams.
“Seven years in, I've pretty much played every position across the front and in the box,” he said. “This is sort of the world I grew up in with Los Angeles, this is sort of that five-down structure, a little bit more coverage, a lot of disguise. Personally, I like this sort of front because I feel like it gives the outside linebackers a bit more creativity.”
Now that the Bills have closed out mini-camp and are now on a seven-week summer vacation, Hoecht hopes to continue making progress in his rehab and if all goes well, he feels confident that he can hit the ground running - literally - when the team reports to St. John Fisher University on July 29.
“After doing enough rehab, you need to start doing things where you don't necessarily know where your feet are going to be,” he said. “You have to re-teach your brain to say, 'I'm bending a corner' and not think, 'left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot,' but actually just do it and be an athlete.
“As far as whether I’m ahead of schedule or not, I don't 100% know. But I know that I feel really good right now. And in rehab … it's almost like having a baby. It's like he's two weeks old, he's four weeks old, he's a month old, he's six months old. You know, it's always like what's that next step that we're taking? No pun intended.”
Sal Maiorana has covered the Buffalo Bills for more than four decades including 37 years as the full-time beat writer/columnist for the D&C. He has written numerous books about the history of the team, and he is also co-host of the BLEAV in Bills podcast/YouTube show. He can be reached at [email protected], and you can follow him on X @salmaiorana and on Bluesky @salmaiorana.bsky.social.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Michael Hoecht injury update and return timeline with Buffalo Bills
Continue reading...
