Over the last four days, the Buffalo Bills have jettisoned their two largest 2018 salary cap commitments and considerably expanded their pool of available money to sign free agents. With the trades of Tyrod Taylor and Cordy Glenn, Buffalo has become a major player in the free agency market in just a few short days.
Trading Taylor cleared $10.44 million from Buffalo’s salary cap figure and saves Buffalo $16 million in real money. With the move of Glenn, Buffalo saves another $4.85 million in cap space and $11.25 million cash in 2018 salary and bonuses.
What had been roughly $146.9 million in Top-51 salary cap commitments went down to $139.978 million by subtracting Taylor and $132.61 million by removing Glenn and adding the next players. (In the offseason, only top 51 players count against the cap so by removing Taylor’s salary, the next ones in line now counts where it didn’t before.)
Buffalo will also need to save $5.44 million in salary cap space to sign their rookie class. The rookies will count about $9.76 million in cap space but will displace nine players at the bottom of the roster in that top-51 metric.
With the NFL’s salary cap set at $177.2 million, Buffalo was also able to roll over $11.6 million in additional salary cap space from the 2017 season, giving them a salary cap limit of $188.8 million.
After all the moves, Buffalo went from the bottom half of the league all the way up to the 10th-most cap room in the entire NFL heading into free agency.
*It should also be noted that these figures do not include information on the signing of Owa Odighizuwa, since those numbers have not yet been released.
NFL salary cap: $177.2 million
Bills 2017 rollover: $11.6 million
Bills 2018 adjusted salary cap: $188.8 million
Bills Top-51 contracts: $115.11 million
Bills 2018 dead money: $35.9 million
Bills 2018 adjusted cap accounted for: $151.1 million
Bills salary cap space right now: $37.7 million
Anticipated 2018 rookie net cap cost: $5.44 million
Bills adjusted salary cap space entering free agency: $32.26 million