ESPN's Adam Schefter is in Pittsford today on his training camp tour covering the Buffalo Bills, and is reporting that the team will release veteran defensive end Aaron Schobel on Wednesday. Once that happens, Schobel will be an unrestricted free agent.
Schefter also reports that Schobel plans on continuing his playing career, and will begin talking with teams "soon." Of course, the Houston Texans were the first team mentioned.
Unless the Bills decided that they wanted to do Schobel perhaps the biggest favor of his life, I don't get the logic behind this decision. As an unrestricted free agent, the market for Schobel's services could be significant, and Buffalo didn't technically have to do anything with him. On the Reserve/Did Not Report list, he didn't count against the team's active roster, and the team could have left him there indefinitely. Schobel could have forced the team's hand by reporting, but he told BuffaloBills.com on Monday that he wouldn't pursue that course of action. It's unclear whether the team would have had to pay Schobel while on the DNR list, which might have been a factor in the decision.
Schobel was due to make $8.28 million in 2010, and any team that would have traded for Schobel would have had to take on that salary. That fact alone makes it highly unlikely that the team would have been able to swap him for even a very-low-round draft pick. Still, it'd have been nice to see them try. If it wasn't clear Monday, however, it's certainly clear now - Schobel's career in Buffalo is over.