The Buffalo Bills’ secret weapon won’t be on the field Sunday.

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She’ll be on the sideline, though, as the team hosts the Baltimore Ravens in the divisional round of the AFC playoffs.

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Bills sports psychologist Desaree Festa talks with cornerback Ja’Marcus Ingram after practice on Thursday.

Joshua Bessex, Buffalo News

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That’s where Dr. Desaree Festa – or “Dr. Dez,” as she’s affectionately known around One Bills Drive – resides for every game. As the team’s sport psychologist, Festa’s role within the organization is often unseen, but highly valued by coaches and players alike.

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“She’s the unsung hero of this team,” offensive tackle Ryan Van Demark said. “She keeps everybody’s head on their shoulders.”

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On game days, Festa observes the big picture on the Buffalo sideline. What’s the energy? What’s the vibe? How is the team dealing with adversity? With players and coaches laser-focused on their specific job, she takes a look at the big picture and reports the answers back to the team’s leaders.​

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Dr Dez's reach within the organization, however, stretches far beyond just game days. Her job is to equip players and coaches with mental performance and mental-health techniques to help optimize their performance on the field, but then also optimize themselves off the field.

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Naturally, that looks different for every player. So, for each and every one of them, from No. 1 to 53 on the active roster (and those on the practice squad, too), Dr Dez has a touch point. She gets to know each of them on a personal level, so they get used to speaking with her.

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“There is a big stigma about men’s mental health, but the whole team uses her,” Van Demark said. “If you’ve got a problem in life, she’s a great asset to have – going in there and just getting stuff of your chest, her helping you through your problems.”

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Like Dr Dez, Van Demark attended Wayne Valley High School, in Wayne, N.J., about 20 miles northwest of Newark. In March, he was invited to give a presentation to the school’s student-athletes about his journey from high school to the NFL, and the challenges he overcame each step of the way. He insisted that Dr Dez join him.

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“She’s great at her job,” Van Demark said. “She’s helped a lot of guys on this team, so going back and talking to kids on a high school level, I think it’s very beneficial to them – coming from a pro athlete and from a professional sport psychologist.”

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Van Demark is hopeful to make the presentation an annual event, and to include the entire school.

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Van Demark entered the NFL as an undrafted free agent with the Colts in 2022. After being released, he signed to the Bills’ practice squad. He cracked the 53-man roster in 2023 and has appeared in 26 regular-season games over the past two years.

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Especially his first couple seasons, he found himself talking to Dr Dez about something almost daily. He has now found a routine that works for him, so his check-ins with her are less frequent. Still, there is a comfort in knowing she is there as a resource whenever he feels the need to talk.

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“Especially being undrafted, your head is spinning. You don’t know your role on the team, exactly. You don’t want to piss anybody off,” he said. “You want to make the team. You want to do everything right. You know anything you say in there is a doctor-patient relationship, where she’s not going to go upstairs and talk to (the front office) about what you’ve got going on. Everybody has baggage and problems at home. Everybody is facing a different problem every day, so to have her on staff to help calm you down and re-center your focus is great.”

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Buffalo Bills sports psychologist Desaree Festa watches during practice on Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025. (Joshua Bessex/Buffalo News)

Joshua Bessex/Buffalo News

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A life calling for Dr Desaree Festa

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Dr Dez played various sports growing up, from track and field to swimming to tennis to field hockey. As a seventh-grader, she had to do a school project on different career fields and chose psychology. The appeal was immediate.

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“I was really interested in optimizing people’s wellness,” she said.

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When she was in high school, Dr Dez's mother was taking a psychology class at a local university and heard her professor talking about the emerging field of sport psychology, which she then shared with her daughter. Marrying her two passions immediately became Dr Dez's career goal.

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She graduated from Wayne Valley in 2000, then attended Eastern University in Pennsylvania, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology. From there she attended Florida State, earning a master’s degree in sport psychology. She was a doctoral intern at The College of William & Mary before earning a doctorate in counseling psychology from Florida State.

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“There was no one I could point to to be like, ‘This is what a sport psychologist looks like and this is what their job is.’ I was passionate about the field and it worked out for me,” Dr Dez said. “I caught a wave of when sport psychology expanded at the collegiate level, and now the pro level.”

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Dr Dez also had the foresight to predict where the field was going. Her sport psychology background gave her knowledge of sport-specific, on-the-field techniques that could be used, but she made sure to equip herself with the mental-health side, so she could take care of the whole athlete.

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Before coming to the Bills, Dr Dez owned a private practice in Charlotte, N.C. There, she consulted for numerous professional and Division I college teams, including the Hornets (NBA), Roush Fenway and Stewart Haas racing (NASCAR) and the Charlotte Checkers (American Hockey League), as well as UNC-Charlotte and Appalachian State.

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The Bills reached out to Dr Dez about a full-time position shortly after the 2019 season.  Dr Dez was happy in her private practice. Nevertheless, she took the interview. After arriving in Buffalo, Dr Dez met with general manager Brandon Beane and head coach Sean McDermott.

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“Having someone full-time, we thought, was important,” McDermott said. “It just seemed like more and more, the mental part of not only the game, but just the mental health of players and staff was becoming more and more important.”

 

​Dr Dez quickly made up her mind: She was ready to make a big career change.

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“I was really impressed with what they were doing,” she said, noting the atmosphere Beane and McDermott had built. “It’s not this way everywhere.”

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Dr Dez quickly found that being embedded with an organization had its advantages. She is part of the team, and her impact can extend outside the building walls.

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“My role helps destigmatize psychology and mental health, so players don’t see me as a problem-based resource,” she said. “ ‘Hey, you have something wrong going on, so go to this office over here and see this lady that you don’t know.’ They see me every day. They get to know me on a personal level, so coming to speak to me isn’t necessarily seen as a problem, it’s seen as a proactive resource. That is really rewarding.”

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Dr Dez sees everything players and coaches have to navigate, and she knows how jam-packed the NFL schedule is on a daily basis. That keeps her more in tune with a person’s specific needs.​

 

“What’s really fascinating about it is, Dez does a lot of work that is confidential because of the side of the business that she’s on,” McDermott said. “What comes with that is a lot of trust that she’s built up over the years that she’s been here. She’s done a phenomenal job.”

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The NFL’s collective bargaining agreement with players mandates that teams have a mental-health provider available for at least eight hours per week. The Bills, though, are one of just six teams who have a full-time position similar to the one Dr Dez fills.

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“The other 26 teams that don’t are trippin’. That would be my word,” Bills safety Damar Hamlin said. “They don’t give a (expletive) about their players the right way. They’re being cheap. It’s essential, bro. If you want to get the best results out of these players on the field, you need someone like (Dr Dez).”

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Bills newcomers have quickly learned what a valuable resource having Dr Dez in the building can be. If they have an issue, they can address it immediately, instead of waiting for a designated time.

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“It’s something that isn’t everywhere,” said wide receiver Mack Hollins, who has been a part of four different organizations. “It’s easy for young guys to think that everywhere is like this. I’ve been around, and not everywhere is like this. There are a lot of places that are nothing like this. She brings an aspect to the team that is an advantage. Why not use that? There is more to football than just the physical side.”

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Dr Dez's unique role

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In-season, Dr Dez does one-on-one sessions with players as often as they would like. In the offseason, she’ll host team presentations on the importance of mental health and sport psychology in maximizing performance. In essence, she has a menu of services.

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She is a firm believer that the higher level an athlete advances to in any sport, the more important his or her mental approach becomes.

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“The physical capabilities start to even out,” she said. “Really, what is the separator is the mental component. Especially here at the professional level, we have very talented players, from our practice squad to our starters. What really is the difference-maker is their mental strength, their mental resilience.”

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Dr Dez's first job is to drive home the importance of mental health to the players. Second, she aims for them to increase their self-awareness. What thoughts work for them? What emotions help motivate them – or hold them back?

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In the same way a player is intentional on the practice field or in learning the playbook, Dr Dez believes they have to be similarly intentional with working on their mental skills.

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“It could be things related to your self-talk. How do you speak to yourself at certain times, certain moments of the game? How do you reset from mistakes and adversity and hardship?” she said. “How do you breathe? There is so much science just to how you can breathe effectively to regulate your nervous system.”

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Breathing techniques and visualization routines are just a couple of the tools Dr Dez uses to help players optimize their on-field performance.

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During the offseason, Dr Dez sits in on the Bills’ draft interviews at the NFL scouting combine, as well as during the 30 visits teams are permitted to hold with incoming draft hopefuls at their facilities. She also conducts Zoom interviews with potential draft candidates. She has done that with the Bills for the past five drafts, and before that, she provided similar assistance to the NBA’s Hornets for five seasons and the Sabres for a couple years (Dr Dez spent her first two years in Buffalo also consulting with them).

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“My role in the draft process is just to look at the mental factors that go into the transition of a player coming into an organization,” she said. “How mentally ready are they? How resilient? How robust is their mental toolbox? I provide that lens so the front office can take that into consideration with their decision-making.”

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When the Bills end up making their draft picks, there is a good chance that the organization has a “cheat sheet” of sorts on how to best support that player right away. It is not uncommon for players who have interviewed with Dr Dez to ask if they can continue working together should they come to the Bills. She makes sure to meet with rookies multiple times throughout their first professional season, because the transition is so big.

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“I have a great relationship with Dr. Dez, and it’s grown. I go see her about a lot of things,” rookie defensive tackle DeWayne Carter said. “It’s a true relationship, instead of transactional, where it’s like, ‘I just need you because I’m down right now.’ It’s true conversation, whether it’s good or bad, and I think that’s the most important piece, because a lot people think about psychology when things are going bad. That’s not always the case.”

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Carter went to college at Duke, which had a strong sport psychology program, so he was immediately comfortable in talking with Dr Dez. It’s not always like that for young players coming into the NFL, though.

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“I know it can be an issue for a lot of guys, but since we walked in the door, everybody has encouraged it from the top down: ‘Go see Dr. Dez.’ It’s a true trust factor,” he said.  Psychology is embedded in every level of, well, everything. It can be found in how an athlete handles the pressure of working in a business as cutthroat as the NFL.

Psychology also comes into play whenever a player gets hurt.

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Hamlin knows that as well as anyone. Dr Dez was a part of the team who aided him in his recovery after Hamlin went into cardiac arrest on the field two years ago.

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“Football is a stressful game, man. It’s a load to take on, so to be able to have her to lessen the load and decompress is amazing,” Hamlin said. “Where I come from, we dealt with all of our problems internally. So, it’s great to be able to have someone to talk to about everything, to be able to not allow that pressure to build up to where you explode.”

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Psychology also exists in the butterflies that accompany a game as big as Sunday’s against Baltimore.

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On Monday, McDermott was asked about the team’s playoff failures the past four years.

The end of his response included this: “It’s all about our mindset and what we’re trying to get done.”

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Is McDermott happy with team’s mindset ahead of its biggest game of the season?

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“I am, and it’s been consistent from the beginning of the year, starting in the spring,” he said. “From the work Dez has done, there are so many things that she’s done that I don’t even know of, which I think is cool about her job. It gives us an advantage. The consistency of the messaging to our players from the start all the way through the season, I think that’s been important.”

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Dr. Desaree Festa, the Bills’ sport psychologist, talks with cornerback Ja’Marcus Ingram after the conclusion of practice Thursday. (Joshua Bessex, Buffalo News)

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‘Somebody I can always come to’​

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After every practice this season, Dr Dez has walked the perimeter of the field with cornerback Ja’Marcus Ingram.

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It’s a plan they came up with during training camp, and they’ve stuck to it.

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“It’s just being consistent with it to see the growth,” Ingram said. “To see her hold me accountable to the things that I said I want, she’s been amazing at being there for me and being present in each and every moment of it. Whether that’s walking with me, talking with me, texting me and reminding me of goals. Sending me things that relate to the things that I want in life.

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“It’s a joy to have her be the person that she is and how much she’s helped me grow.”

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Ingram missed a pair of practices last week as he returned to Salt Lake City to be with his girlfriend, who gave birth to their daughter, Poetry.

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Throughout the season, Ingram’s conversations with Dr Dez have rarely dealt with football. Instead, they’ve been about life. About relationships. About fatherhood. About the real-world problems all of us have – even NFL athletes.

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“It’s speaking positivity into my life and how I can elevate each and every day,” he said. “It’s all based around self-improvement in every aspect and area of my life. Talking to her every day, being around her, I’ve learned a lot about myself. She’s somebody I can always come to to get my mind right or get my spirit right when it comes to my approach to the game or my approach to life.

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“She’s been a great asset to me since I stepped foot in the building".

 

"That’s why she’s our secret weapon.”

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