The Bills didn’t want Stefon Diggs to become an “albatross” on their books.
Buffalo general manager Brandon Beane recently told “The Athletic NFL Show” that he shockingly traded the stud receiver to the Texans this offseason to get in front of what could have become a terrible contract.
“A player of his caliber, you weigh a lot of things on the situation,” Beane said. “From a cap standpoint, we decided to just go ahead and eat it now and we think we can compete and do what we need to do by eating it now and then not walk into next year … because if we didn’t, if we tried to come up with some way and split it up too many different ways, now it’s just like that albatross, just hanging on your neck all year. You look at your cap and you’re going, ‘Oh, man, look at how much money we still have dead.”
Buffalo had some tough calls to make this year to get under the salary cap, and that brought the 30-year-old Diggs under the microscope.
The Bills had previously handed Diggs a four-year contract covering the 2022-25 seasons, but Diggs is now at an age where stats usually start to dip, and he declined in the second half of the 2023 season.
The veteran also seemed unhappy at times in recent years, which previously played a role in why the Vikings sent him to the Bills in 2020.
Diggs would have only cost $27.86 million on this year’s book, but the Bills opted to take a historic dead cap hit now rather than affect future books.
Buffalo is now carrying a dead cap hit for Diggs at $31.096 million, the highest for any receiver in NFL history, per ESPN, after trading Diggs and two late-round picks for a second-round selection.
Beane explained multiple times throughout the interview that he is always trying to avoid having the cap leave him in a spot where he enters a season knowing his roster is under-manned.
Buffalo also cut fellow veterans such as safety Jordan Poyer, center Mitch Morse and cornerback Tre’Davious White to help create cap space.
“We had to make some tough cap decisions this year,” Beane said. “We also said there are some areas where our roster is aging, let’s infuse some youth, there’s obviously some cost benefit to that.”
The receiver room is certainly where Buffalo will be young this season, with the Bills also losing Gabe Davis to the Jaguars in a big-money free-agency deal.
They signed veterans Curtis Samuel and Marques Valdez-Scantling, while also using their first selection — pick No. 33 — to draft Florida State star Keon Coleman in the second round.
“I would say our receiver room right now is like Baskin Robbins,” Beane joked. “We got a lot of flavors.”