Buffalo Bills salary cap ramifications for trading Marcell Dareus to Jacksonville Jaguars

The Buffalo Bills traded Marcell Dareus to the Jacksonville Jaguars on Friday night. While the team netted a sixth round draft pick, they also added a lot of salary cap space. Here’s the breakdown.

2017

Buffalo pays Dareus $3.66 of his salary plus a $250,000 workout bonus and saves approximately $6 million dollars in salary. Buffalo won’t have to pay 10/16ths of Dareus’ $9.75 million salary. They have already paid his pro-rated portion of the signing bonus for the year and his workout bonus.

2018

Here is where Buffalo gets saddled with a big $14.2 cap hit. That’s the remaining money from Dareus’ signing bonus. To offset that, the Bills won’t have to pay $9.9 million salary or the $6.4 million portion of his signing bonus already accounted for. Buffalo saves about $2 million, all told, in 2018.

2019

Dareus had a $16.6 million cap hit in 2019. All of that is off the books now. Buffalo won’t have to pay him $8.3 million in salary and won’t have any residual cap hits.

2020

Just like 2019, Dareus won’t count at all. $12.35 million in salary and a $1.4 million portion of his signing bonus is wiped out. His $14.65 million cap hit is gone.

2021

The final year of his contract, Dareus was owed $12.4 million in salary. That’s the Jaguars problem now.

What Buffalo spent

All together, the Bills spent a huge chunk on Dareus. In addition to a $25 million signing bonus, he made more than $15 million in base salary and a $7 million option bonus in 2016. That’s $47 million for 2.5 seasons of Dareus and he was suspended or hurt for 11 of those 38 contests.

This does not include his rookie contract money.