Despite re-signing three key free agents over the last few days, the Buffalo Bills still have some salary cap space to work with. They also have the ability to create more space if they really want to, with or without cutting players.
Without details from Jon Feliciano’s contract, the Bills have roughly $10 million in Top-51 salary cap space according to Spotrac. In the offseason, only the top 51 salary cap hits are counted and not the entire 90-man roster.
I looked at similar three-year deals to Feliciano, and they had first-year cap hits around $3.5 million, so let’s round it up to $4 million. Similarly, the NFL Draft class is going to have collective cap hits of $6 million. So that means Buffalo is out of money, right?
Wrong.
Since only the top 51 salary cap numbers count in the offseason, Feliciano’s signing will bump out one of the low numbers and the majority of the rookie class will be outside the Top-51. So realistically, the Bills have about $5 million in cap space heading into Monday.
They can create cap space fairly easily, as well:
- Restructure Tre’Davious White ($8.5 million)
- Restructure Stefon Diggs ($7.5 million)
- Cut Tyler Matakevich ($3.3 million)
- Restructure Jordan Poyer ($2.4 million)
- Restructure A.J. Klein ($2.3 million)
- Cut TE Lee Smith ($2.25 million)
- Restructure Cole Beasley ($2 million)
- Extend Jerry Hughes ($2 million)
- Restructure Dion Dawkins ($1 million)
So if you see some of these moves being made, maybe it means another deal is on the horizon.