The Buffalo Bills have been trying over and over again to address their defensive line, and the 2022 offseason has been no different. Part of the reason for it is that despite spending a lot of money and draft capital at the position, they haven’t hit on a defensive end in the NFL Draft. At number eight on our list of worst values for the Bills in 2021 is another one of those defensive ends, Greg Rousseau. We’re not piling on the rookie, but he made a lot of money for a less-than-great impact in his first NFL season.
In the past when we’ve done our listing, we used cap hit to reflect value, but with the cap shenanigans employed by general manager Brandon Beane recently and the improvement of the databases, we’ve switched to yearly cash payments as our metric.
Rousseau was tenth on the Bills with almost $6.5 million in cash payments in 2021. He was right behind All-Pro safety Jordan Poyer and ahead of Mario Addison, Mitch Morse, Tremaine Edmunds, Levi Wallace, and several other starters, to give you perspective. He was the second-highest paid DE on the Bills behind only Jerry Hughes and 31st in the NFL among defensive ends. With 64 “starting” defensive ends, that puts his salary in the top half of starters for the entire league.
He had what I would call a solid rookie year. He finished the season second on the team with four sacks and 50 tackles along with an athletic interception, four passes defended, and a forced fumble. His four sacks tied him with a handful of other NFL players at 94th in the NFL.
In all, he took nearly 50% of the team’s snaps at DE, second only to Hughes. He out-snapped Hughes if you include his special teams plays.
His cash number drops considerably in 2022 without his first-round signing bonus. He will make less than $1.2 million in cash this season. With those snap numbers and stat lines at that cap figure, he would have been high on the best value list this past year.
Buffalo Bills 2021 Worst Values
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- DE Greg Rousseau
- LB Tyler Matakevich
- DE Boogie Basham
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