The Buffalo Bills faced a great deal of difficulty the previous season, but they overcame it by winning five games in a row toward the conclusion of the campaign to get into the postseason and ultimately win the AFC East against the Miami Dolphins in the season finale.
The Bills will have another problem this offseason as they try to escape a salary cap crisis, even though the task may not be quite as tough.
The Bills’ general manager, Brandon Beane, has already issued a warning, saying that the team won’t be making any big free agency
acquisitions, unlike the previous offseason when they made a splashBleacher Report’s “Complete NFL Offseason Trade Guide for Every NFL Team,” published on January 29, made the suggestion that the Bills will find a way to generate cap space, even if it means parting ways with one of the offense’s key players in order to do so.
The Bills have a lot of work ahead of them to get under the salary cap for the 2023 campaign, according to Bleacher Report. The report also pointed out that two high-paid but underperforming players, Stefon Diggs and edge rusher Von Miller, are basically locked in because it would cost a dead cap to trade or release them.
According to the source, center Mitch Morse, who inked a two-year, $19.5 million contract extension that will keep him in Buffalo until the 2024 campaign, is another player who might make a more sensible “top trade asset.”
The scouting section of Bleacher Report noted, “Mitch Morse is still a good center, but trading him would free up $8.5 million and there are less expensive options.”
Trading Morse would free up cap space for the Bills and probably result in a draft pick as well, but it would also open up a spot at one of the team’s most reliable spots. The same group of players started all 17 regular-season games and both playoff games for the Bills last season, meaning there were no significant injuries to the offensive line.
The Bills could find a way to keep Morse on the team but still squeeze some cap savings out of his contract, The Athletic’s Joe Buscaglia suggested. Buscaglia noted that the Bills could add a void year to Morse’s contract for 2025, a move that they have used sparingly when in need of cap savings.
Buscaglia noted that the Bills could save $5.01 million with the move.
“The Morse amount added to 2025 wouldn’t be so overwhelming that it puts them in a bad spot and would provide them a nice boost to their cap space in 2024,” Buscaglia wrote. “And with Morse still playing at a high level, there could be incentive to shrink the potential 2025 cap hit from the added void years by agreeing to a one-year contract
In order to clear cap space, the organization may make other moves. Many have Josh Allen’s contract restructured in mind. Pro Football Talk’s Peter King also proposed that the Bills rework Diggs’ deal, asking him to take a salary cut following a season in which he experienced a precipitous decline in output in the second half of the campaign.