The Buffalo Bills have work to do to get salary cap compliant, but they did get a bit of good news on the efforts on Friday.
The Buffalo Bills are heading into an offseason filled with questions. New head coach aside, the biggest questions come when looking at the roster.
Whether General Manager/President of Football Operations Brandon Beane wants to admit it or not, Buffalo has a lot of holes to fill throughout the lineup. Whether it be at wide receiver, edge rusher, linebacker, or elsewhere, there's work that needs to be done to field a contending team in 2026.
To field that type of team, however, Beane has to work around the salary cap. As things stand, the Bills are above the cap, but there is a little bit of relief on the way.
On Friday, the NFL sent a memo to teams with 2026 salary cap projections. According to the league, they expect the cap to be in the range of $301.2 million to $305.7 million.
That amounts to an increase of anywhere between 7.9% to 9.5% from the $279.2 million cap ceiling of 2025.
For the Bills, seeing it rise that high makes maneuvering a bit easier.
As things stand, the Bills will be anywhere from $5.77 million to $10.27 million over the cap. While you would be forgiven at wondering how the Bills can make any additions to the roster in that situation, the cap is a flexible endeavor thanks to the ability to restructure contracts.
There are a number of players on the roster that are eligible to have their contracts adjusted. This would allow Buffalo to push money down the line in future years when the salary cap is expected to rise even more as revenues increase.
The biggest savings could come from restructuring the contracts of Josh Allen, Ed Oliver, Dion Dawkins, and Spencer Brown. With Allen, Buffalo can clear up to $12 million this season; Oliver, around $10 million; Dawkins, as much as $11 million; and Brown can bring as much as $10.6 million.
Should the Bills decide to go down the route of restructuring all four, you could be looking at a team going from $5-$10 million over to $30 million under in short order. Of course, there's other moves that can be done to clear even more space, but that would likely come with players taking pay cuts or being released altogether.
If the Bills ultimately take every option available to them, they could head into free agency with over $60 million in space.
Will Beane do that much work for this year? That all depends on the moves he's looking to make. Either way, things are certain to get interesting in Western New York.
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