The Buffalo Bills head into the 2024 offseason with negative salary cap space, few cut candidates, and little hope of completely overhauling the roster around superstar quarterback Josh Allen.
On one hand, this is OK. The Bills have been one of the best teams in the NFL in recent years, and even with an ugly stretch of five losses in eight games midseason, they still ripped off five consecutive wins to close out the regular season, won the AFC East for the fourth-straight year, and got another playoff win.
That said, another soul-crushing loss to the Kansas City Chiefs has lent even more credence to the fact that the Bills — as currently constructed — have a hard ceiling as the second or third-best AFC team in a given year.
For this reason, the Bills 2024 offseason probably should include some bold changes, in order to shake up the squad. With that in mind, here are three Bills cut candidates entering the offseason.
C Mitch Morse
The Bills head into the offseason a staggering $56.6 million over the cap, according to Spotrac.
The good news is, Buffalo general manager Brandon Beane can get that under control with relative ease by restructuring or extending deals for Josh Allen, Stefon Diggs, Von Miller, Dion Dawkins, Tre'Davious White, Dawson Knox, Matt Milano, and a few others.
Still, the team needs to make some tough choices when it comes to saving big money, and veteran center Mitch Morse is one of those choices. He is a good center who made the Pro Bowl in 2022 and started every game this season. In fact, he’s been pretty close to an Iron Man in Buffalo, missing just six games in five seasons.
The problem here is that at 32 (in April), Morse is set to make $11.2 million in the final year of his deal. If the Bills can get an extension at a deep discount, keeping Morse would make sense. But cutting him saves $8.4 million, and the team is due to draft or sign a younger center anyway.
Morse is a difficult Bills cut candidate to jettison this offseason, but it only gets harder from here.
CB Tre’Davious White
As mentioned above, restructuring the Tre’Davious White contract will help the Bills tame their salary cap issues. A simple base salary restructure will save the Bills $3.6 million. However, releasing the All-Pro cornerback will save the team $6 million.
Cutting a 29-year-old two-time Pro Bowler and one-time All-Pro is another tough call. However, saving $6 million is helpful for a Bills salary cap with razor-thin margins and White has suffered catastrophic knee and Achilles injuries in two of the last three seasons. He’s missed 30 games in these three campaigns, and there is no guarantee he’ll be ready for Week 1 of 2024.
Buffalo is fairly deep at corner after trading for Rasul Douglas at the 2023 NFL Trade Deadline. They also have promising youngster Christian Benford, solid veteran Taron Johnson, affordable free agent Dane Jackson, and former first-round project Kaiir Elam.
With his injury history, White is no longer a $16 million-per-year CB, and the savings that cutting him offers the Bills is too much to pass up.
WR Stefon Diggs
Stefon Diggs is the last of the Bills 2024 cut candidates this offseason, and while it is (by far) not the most likely option, hear me out.
There is obviously something wrong with the relationship between some combination of Diggs, Josh Allen, Sean McDermott, and the organization. Diggs went full Diva Wide Receiver on the sidelines at the end of the 2022 campaign, went AWOL during training camp this offseason, and saw his usage and playing time nosedive after offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey got fired and Joe Brady took over.
Diggs has been excellent since coming to Buffalo in a 2019 trade that may go down as one of the best overall in NFL history, with Diggs helping the Bills rise and netting the Minnesota Vikings Justin Jefferson. However, lesser wideouts than Diggs have completely wrecked promising teams with their antics.
Cutting Diggs would further aggravate the Bills’ salary cap problems. The star WR has a $27,854,000 cap hit in 2024 and a $31,096,000 dead cap number. So, cutting Diggs now would add another $3.2 million to the team’s salary cap hole.
That said, cutting him after June 1 would actually save the team money this season. A post-6/1 cut would pit $19 million on this year’s cap (an $8.8 million savings) and push $22.2 million in dead cap to 2025.
A trade would be better, and leave a similar salary cap situation for the franchise. However, if Diggs is going to be a distraction, Beane has to make the tough call and get rid of him before he tanks the 2024 season.
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