The Buffalo Bills are having quite a busy offseason, with the team's front office — led by general manager Brandon Beane, pulling off a number of maneuvers to navigate through the franchise's financial landspace.
The Bills have released some notable players and will have some decisions to make on other assets soon. Among them is defensive end Gregory Rousseau, who only has a guaranteed year left on his current deal with Buffalo and has a fifth-year option in 2025 worth $13.38 million.
Beane, however, sounded confident that the Bills would be able to satisfy Rousseau on that front eventually.
“We have not discussed it a lot, just trying to get through this, but I don’t see any reason why we wouldn’t do it,” Beane said when asked about Buffalo's plan with the fifth-year option of Rousseau.
Gregory Rousseau's career with the Bills
Rousseau is coming off a solid campaign for the Bills in 2023 — his third season with the team that drafted him in the first round (30th overall) of the 2021 NFL Draft. He finished fifth on the team in 2023 with five sacks to go with 42 combined tackles. His 30 solo tackles that season were the most of his career so far. The former Miami Hurricanes star also had four passes defended and a forced fumble plus 18 quarterback hits in 16 games for the Bills, who finished the season fifth in the NFL with a defensive sack rate of 8.22 percent.
Although Rousseau's five-sack production in 2023 was fewer than the eight quarterback takedowns he had in 2022, he still netted a fantastic overall 85.6 Pro Football Focus grade with a 78.3 rating on run defense and a 73.4 rating on the pass rushing department.
So far in his Bills (and NFL) career, Rousseau, who will be turning 24 in April, has racked up a total of 17.0 sacks, 129 combined tackles and 30 tackles for loss. He also has career outputs of 12 passes defended and three forced fumbles.
New Chicago Bears defensive coordinator and former Bills defensive line coach Eric Washington had good words about the progress of Rousseau in the NFL down the stretch of the 2023 campaign. Rousseau can definitely take advantage of being with the Bills for one more season to further develop into a much more dangerous defensive asset, particularly against the run.
“Greg’s doing a really good job of bending his knees and playing with good leverage, using his hands, getting off blocks,” Washington said back in December (via Nick Sabato of the Niagara Gazette). “The TFL that he attained (against Dallas) was also a function of Greg not giving the offensive tackle any information that he was slanting across his face, which is a key element to stunt fundamentals when we want to change the hitting points. Greg gave the right tackle no information.”
Bills have made drastic moves in 2024 offseason to alleviate salary cap situation
In order to address Buffalo's salary cap situation, the Bills released the likes of safety Jordan Poyer, center Mitch Morse, and defensive back Tre'Davious White to NFL free agency. In addition to those surprising moves, Buffalo made adjustments to the contracts of quarterback Josh Allen, defensive end Von Miller, and tight end Dawson Knox. Moreover, the Bills let defensive end Leonard Floyd and wide receiver Gabe Davis test the waters of free agency.
Rousseau, who signed a four-year deal worth $11.6 million with Buffalo back in 2021, doesn't seem to have his fifth-year option as a priority of the Bills at the moment, but that will have to be decided on at one point this year by the Bills.
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