“Making Room for Success: 3 Players Who Might Face the Axe on Buffalo Bills’ Roster in…

The Buffalo Bills had limited chance of totally revamping the roster around superstar quarterback Josh Allen going into the 2024 offseason, little salary cap flexibility, and few cut possibilities.

In a way, this is acceptable. The Bills have been among the top teams in the NFL in recent years. Despite a terrible run of five defeats in eight games at the middle of the season, they finished the regular season with five straight victories, won the AFC East for the fourth year in a row, and advanced to the playoffs.

Nevertheless, further evidence that the Bills, as currently assembled, have a hard ceiling as the second or third-best AFC club in a given season has been provided by another heartbreaking loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.

Because of this, the Bills 2024 offseason ought to bring in a few big names to liven things up a bit. Taking that into consideration, these three Bills cut prospects start the offseason.

C. Mitch Morse
According to Spotrac, the Bills are a startling $56.6 million above the cap going into the offseason.

The good news is that by rearranging or extending contracts for Josh Allen, Stefon Diggs, Von Miller, Dion Dawkins, Tre’Davious White, Dawson Knox, Matt Milano, and a few other players, Buffalo general manager Brandon Beane can handle that with reasonable simplicity.

However, in order to save a significant amount of money, the team must make some difficult decisions, and acquiring veteran centre Mitch Morse is one of them. A good centre, he started every game this season and was selected to the Pro Bowl in 2022.

season. He has been practically an Iron Man in Buffalo, missing only six games over the course of five seasons.

The issue here is that Morse’s contract calls for him to make $11.2 million in the last year at the age of 32 (in April). It makes sense for the Bills to keep Morse if they can get a steep discount on an extension. However, the team will save $8.4 million by removing him, and they will eventually sign or draft a younger centre.It will be challenging to cut Morse this summer, but things only become more difficult from here.

CB Tre’Davious White

The restructure of Tre’Davious White’s deal will assist the Bills in managing their salary cap problems, as was previously mentioned. The Bills will save $3.6 million by restructuring base salaries simply. Nevertheless, the Giants will save $6 million by cutting loose the All-Pro cornerback.

Making the difficult decision to cut a 29-year-old All-Pro and two-time Pro Bowl player is another. Saving $6 million is beneficial, though, because White has experienced severe knee and Achilles ailments in two of the last three seasons, and the Bills have a salary cap with extremely narrow margins. In these three seasons, he has missed thirty games, and there is no assurance that he will be fit for 2024’s opening week.

After acquiring Rasul Douglas during the 2023 NFL Trade Deadline, Buffalo has a reasonably deep cornerback position. In addition, they have cheap free agent Dane Jackson, reliable veteran Taron Johnson, promising youngster Christian Benford, and former first-round project Kaiir Elam.

White is no longer a $16 million-per-year CB due to his injury history, and the Bills can’t resist the savings of cutting him.

WR Stefon Diggs

The final Bills 2024 cut candidate this offseason is Stefon Diggs. Although this is (by far) not the most likely scenario, bear with me.

Evidently, there is a problem in the connection between Diggs, Josh Allen, Sean McDermott, and the organisation. After offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey was fired and Joe Brady took over, Diggs went all Diva Wide Receiver on the sidelines at the conclusion of the 2022 season, went MIA at training camp this year, and witnessed a sharp decline in his usage and playing time.

Since joining Buffalo in 2019—perhaps the greatest trade in NFL history overall—Diggs has been outstanding. He helped the Bills win and acquired Justin Jefferson from the Minnesota Vikings. But with their antics, less talented wideouts than Diggs have completely destroyed promising teams.

Removing Diggs would make the Bills’ salary cap issues worse. The great wide receiver has a dead cap amount of $31,096,000 and a cap hit of $27,854,000 in 2024. Thus, the team’s salary cap hole would increase by an additional $3.2 million if Diggs were cut immediately.

However, the team would actually save money this season if he were cut after June 1. A post-6/1 cut would push $22.2 million in dead cap to 2025 and spend $19 million on this year’s cap (saving $8.8 million).

It would be preferable to make a transaction that keeps the franchise’s pay cap in place. But before Diggs ruins the 2024 season, Beane needs to make the difficult decision to cut him loose if he is going to be a nuisance.