When Should Bills Fans Be Worried About Kicker Tyler Bass?

The Buffalo Bills were without the services of kicker Tyler Bass for the entire 2025 season as Bass dealt with a painful pelvic injury, but the expectation was that Bass would be healthy and ready to go as the Bills got ready for training camp at St. John Fisher University.

It has been nearly a year since Bass kicked a football for the Bills—during the 2025 preseason finale against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers—but so far, through the first five practice sessions at camp, Bass has yet to publicly attempt a field goal.

Nearly eight months after Bass had surgery to repair a sports hernia, the kicker has not suffered any setbacks as he works his way back onto the field, according to special teams coordinator Jeff Rodgers.

That thought was echoed by Bass, who said his body is “feeling good, we’re excited to get back and the process has been really kind of recovering, strengthening.”

During a Q&A with the media on Tuesday, Rodgers said that, despite a lack of kicks during the team’s sessions that have been open to the media and fans, Bass has been working on his kicking in situations outside of team practices.

The reason why fans haven’t been able to watch Bass attempt field goals and extra points so far at camp? The team hasn’t reached the step in their training camp schedule where they want to work extensively on field goals in game scenarios.

“It has been by design,” Rodgers told WGR 550’s Paul Hamilton. “It’s not ‘Don’t let him kick just yet,’ there’s a finite number of things that we can get done on the field and field goal protection is not going to be as competitive in practice as it is in a game, so we take advantage of the walk through time because of the tempo that it requires, but at some point guys have got to start working on that stuff.”

Rodgers revealed that, starting with today’s practice, fans curious about how Bass’ recovery can watch him handle field goals and extra point scenarios at camp. Rodgers told reporters that during Thursday’s practice sessions, the Bills will work on field-goal protection scenarios as a team for the third time since gathering at Fisher, and for the first time in pads to replicate game scenarios.

Through the first five practices, Buffalo’s special teams units have prioritized working on their kickoffs and punts, while work on field-goal protection has been addressed during walkthrough sessions.

“We just go step-by-step with it and try to put him environments that he’s going to be in, we build from there. We’ve done some individual and team stuff, but it hasn’t worked out for us to be on the field quite yet, but that will happen later on this week and then again at the stadium,” Rodgers said.

“I don’t think you skip steps, it starts from ground zero and he’s working with two new holders right now (Mitch Wishnowsky and Tommy Doman) and that’s a part of that comfort, so it’s going to be a rep thing, but he looks like he did on tape and everything is going well so far.”

The last time Bass kicked in a game was on Aug. 23, 2025, when he converted on three of his four field goal attempts and made both extra points in Buffalo’s preseason finale vs. Tampa Bay. Though Bass attempted to play through the pain he experienced last preseason, he was never able to shake off the discomfort and was eventually placed on injured reserve before the season began.

Prior to his injury-plagued 2025 campaign, Bass had appeared in all 83 games since being selected with the No. 188 overall selection in the sixth round of the 2020 NFL Draft.

Rodgers said Bass is looking forward to his first opportunity to kick in Buffalo’s new Highmark Stadium, which will occur Saturday night during the team’s annual “Return of the Blue & Red” practice starting at 7 p.m.

Bills fans are hoping Bass is able to make a full recovery and return to being an effective offensive weapon. Through his first five seasons, Bass made 131 of his 155 field goals during the regular season (84.5%) and converted 264 of his 274 extra point attempts (96.4%).