Over the weekend, one of the significant NFL dates came and went without much fanfare. After June 1, every roster cut that’s made pushes a good chunk of the player’s dead-cap hit into the following season instead of the current one.
A mechanism built into the CBA is the post-June 1 designation, which allows teams to cut a player in March and get the same cap benefit in June. All of those moves tolled on Sunday.
In 2024, the Buffalo Bills were one of the 12 teams that opened up cap space with the post-June 1 designation. Buffalo designated Tre’Davious White as a post-June 1 cut before releasing him, so his cap hit remained on the team’s roster until now.
With the move, the Bills opened up approximately $10.2 million in cap space over the weekend.
In reality, it’s more like $9.2 million in real relief, because with White moving off the salary cap roster, Andy Isabella and his $993,000 cap hit move on. In the offseason, the top 51 contracts are used to calculate the salary cap despite having 90 or 91 signed players.
After all the accounting, Buffalo has $10.1 million in available cap space right now.
That is before they sign their draft picks, which should happen in short order here. Only Buffalo’s top two picks will land in their top 51 contracts, and they will be replacing contracts that are a couple hundred thousand dollars lower, so the cap space needed for them is pretty negligible.
The majority of that available space is likely being reserved by general manager Brandon Beane for training camp or in-season adds when a player gets injured, but they could use a portion of that money to sign one of the free agents still available.
In 2023, the Bills added Leonard Floyd in June, and he ended up leading the team in sacks. Talent is still out there, and Buffalo could bring back safety Micah Hyde if he decides to suit up once again. Before June 1, Buffalo had less than a million bucks in cap space and now they’ve got some room.
