Bills General Manager Brandon Beane says the calculation in trading wide receiver Stefon Diggs to the Texans was simple: The Bills no longer thought Diggs’ contributions justified the salary cap hits on the contract they signed him to, and once that decision was made, it was best to move on.
Beane said on The Athletic Football Show that teams that hold onto expensive veteran players for too long come to find that they’re handcuffed under the salary cap. The Bills don’t want to be one of those teams.
“A player of his caliber, you weigh a lot of things in those situations,” Beane said. “But ultimately, we just talked about the cap. I don’t need to go through all the reasons why we decided to go ahead and do that. I would say, from a cap standpoint, we decided just to go ahead and eat it now. We think we can compete and do what we need to do by eating it now. And not next year. Because if we didn’t, if we tried to come up with some way to split it up too many different ways, then now it’s just like that albatross hanging on your neck all year. You look at your cap and you’re going, Look how much money we still have dead.”
For Diggs, his contract extension with the Bills was a great deal — and then he got another great deal when the Texans agreed to wipe out all of his contract beyond 2024 and make him a free agent in 2025. Beane thought the best deal for the Bills was to move on. Right away.