The 2024 NFL Draft is done. The Buffalo Bills have what looks like most of their roster for the upcoming season and a depth chart with a few more holes than many have been accustomed to with this team since 2020.
Despite their moves to get younger and cheaper in some areas, they are defiant that this upcoming campaign is not one they’re punting away — not with Josh Allen as their starting quarterback.
To their point, the Bills are alive for a championship push as long as Allen is healthy and in his prime. Turning only 28 later this month, he’s still in the middle of his prime. But to think the Bills aren’t going through a year of transition isn’t a transparent conclusion. On paper, they are worse than they were a year ago. That doesn’t mean they’ll be bad in 2024. But in the NFL, actions trump words.
The Bills could have easily continued to kick the can down the road this offseason with restructures that lead to big future cap charges just to open up more short-term relief in cap space. The New Orleans Saints and the Los Angeles Rams have used this strategy for years.
However, general manager Brandon Beane actively chose to avoid that strategy. Between allowing some mid-tier free agents to walk, cutting veteran players this year, minimizing the number of restructures they did, not using as many void years as they have in the past, and trading away one of their biggest cap hits in this and future seasons, it all points to one conclusion: The Bills are positioning themselves to be major players during the 2025 offseason.
That vision has guided every move Beane has made over the past few months. And with significant resources in tow, they hope another major push toward reaching and winning a Super Bowl for the first time in franchise history is viable.
The last two offseasons have followed a similar refrain. Buffalo needed to clear a bunch of cap space to get cap-compliant before making minimal moves in free agency. The two biggest March contracts they’ve doled out have been to offensive lineman Connor McGovern (currently ranked 24th average per year for guards) and Curtis Samuel (34th for receivers) while backfilling with one-year types, sometimes incurring even more future year dead cap to make it happen.
In 2023, their maneuvering mainly focused on keeping the team in place with a few mid-tier additions. The 2024 offseason focused on clearing space and bringing on as little future cap debt as possible while remaining competitive. These two completely different approaches yielded the same short-term results in their free-agent haul.
The difference is with how they approached 2024 and now the fruits of that strategy. The 2025 offseason is already shaping up to easily provide the Bills with the most cap flexibility since signing Von Miller to a massive contract in the 2022 offseason. It’s pretty rudimentary, but nothing screams that louder than the Bills already being well under next year’s projected salary cap after projecting in the red for the following offseason each of the last two years. And yes, that includes Greg Rousseau’s fifth-year option for 2025, which Over The Cap projects to be just under $13.4 million fully guaranteed.
With a projected $260 million salary cap, Over The Cap has them with $14 million in cap space for 2025 — though that doesn’t factor in multiple things that could improve that figure. First, depending on what the Bills choose to do with the $10.2 million available on June 1 for the Tre’Davious White release, any cap space they don’t spend in 2024 rolls over into 2025. Those added cap funds and their current cap space give them around $12 million — not including the draft picks who have yet to sign. Keeping the 53-man roster in mind, not just the Top 51, those picks will account for a little over $3 million — and that’s if all 53 of their present highest cap hits were to stick on the final roster — which is unlikely. So, figure, for now, the Bills have around $9 million to work with as of June
Second, the Bills have three obvious cap-clearing moves in their pocket for 2025. One move is to cut Miller, who would be heading into his age-36 season. The team would clear a whopping $8.457 million of cap space by cutting him. On top of that, they can do two unmistakable simple restructures to push some cap space forward. The rule of thumb is only doing restructures with players in the prime of their careers that you intend to stay on the roster for the long term. Defensive tackle Ed Oliver and nickel cornerback Taron Johnson are the two players, with Oliver yielding potentially $8.33 million in 2025 cap savings and Johnson $3.156 million. This is all before even bringing up any restructuring to Allen’s contract, which accounts for over $43 million on next year’s cap. An Allen restructure would give them a little under $10 million extra towards 2025, though that would up his cap hits to $67 million in 2026, $60 million in 2027, and $51 million in 2028 and may not be something they want to do at that point.
So, without counting any rollover funds, a potential Allen restructure, or the NFL salary cap being higher than the projected $260 million, those three moves next year would push up the Bills’ 2025 cap space to just under $34 million. For Beane, who has been handcuffed by minimal cap space, that is a significant figure.
