The Buffalo Bills have released linebacker AJ Klein. The team announced the transaction on Tuesday.
The move is most likely a salary cap causality to help the club save some cap space.
Slated to have a $5.6 million cap hit in 2022, Klein’s contract only carried a dead-cap hit of $400K.
That’s a potential savings around $5.2M, according to Spotrac.
On Monday, the NFL announced the league would have a salary cap of $208.2M in 2022. Buffalo general manager Brandon Beane said via WGR-550 radio his team is $6.6M over that cap as of Tuesday morning.
Releasing Klein helps bridge that gap. The team is now somewhere just north of $1M over the salary cap now.
Despite being released by the Bills, there is an outside chance Klein’s time in Buffalo is not over.
The team needed to do something to figure out the salary cap. There’s no rule against Klein now re-signing =.
However, the price tag will likely have to be smaller.
In 2021, Klein’s skills did not drop off but his usage did. On defense, Klein played in 29 percent of snaps for the Bills this season. A year ago, he saw 61 percent of snaps for Buffalo.
A new contract will likely have to reflect that type of work for the Bills. Time will tell if the team wants to bring him back as he did have a positive role with the Bills.
If Klein does not return, it’s likely that Tyrel Dodson would be Buffalo’s top backup linebacker on their defense behind starters Matt Milano and Tremaine Edmunds.
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