The Buffalo Bills are in the midst of an important offseason for their franchise as they look to finally break through to the Super Bowl for the first time since 1993. For a Buffalo team looking to maximize the window that they have with superstar quarterback Josh Allen, trading an elite wide receiver like Stefon Diggs seems to fly in the face of that goal.
“Listen, I think there’s a lot of things you weigh. A player of his (Diggs) caliber, you weigh a lot of things,” Bills general manager Brandon Beane said during his appearance on “The Athletic Football Show” with Robert Mays that was published on Tuesday. Buffalo traded Diggs, along with a 2024 sixth-round pick (No. 189 overall) and a 2025 fifth-round pick, on Apr. 3 to the Houston Texans in exchange for a 2025 second-round pick (via the Minnesota Vikings).
“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,” Beane said of the Diggs trade that now saddles the Bills with $31 million in dead cap space.
Not only did Buffalo trade away Diggs, but they also allowed WR Gabe Davis to leave for the Jacksonville Jaguars in free-agency, leaving the franchise to make up for two receivers that accounted for 44.8% of the receiving yardage and 52.0% of the receiving touchdowns.
The Bills tried to make up for the void of Diggs and Davis by using multiple avenues to add receiver talent, such as signing Curtis Samuel and Marquez Valdes-Scantling along with drafting receiver Keon Coleman with the 33rd overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft. Beane acknowledged that the motivation for trading was more monetary than anything else.
“If we tried to come up with some way and split it up too many different ways then 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,” Beane said.
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