At a bare minimum, the Buffalo Bills needed bodies at the tight end position heading into free agency with only Dawson Knox and Nate Becker on the active roster. The bare minimum is what they got in former Seattle Seahawks tight end Jacob Hollister.
That’s not to say that Hollister is a bare minimum player, but his contract is. According to Aaron Wilson of the Houston Chronicle, Hollister will play 2021 under the veteran minimum exception and only count $850,000 against the cap.
He gets a $137,500 signing bonus and a $990,000 salary for a total cost of $1,127,500 if he makes the roster. They can cut him at the end of August and only have paid him the signing bonus.
With Knox on his rookie deal and Becker on a minimum deal, the Bills still have the lowest-paid tight end position group in the league, even when including former seventh-rounder Tommy Sweeney, who currently sits on the Reserve/COVID-19 list with coronavirus-linked myocarditis. You can lump in H-back Reggie Gilliam and still not get to the amount of collective money the Bills paid Tyler Kroft a year ago.
Kroft signed with the New York Jets on Friday.