(EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of a two-part series on the Bills’ salary cap situation and off-season moves. Today, general manager Brandon Beane talks about Buffalo’s cap hurdle)
One of my all-time favorite Bills personalities, in a half-century of covering the team, was the late John Butler. A big burly man with a booming laugh, there wasn’t a single media person who didn’t love the guy. When facing the occasional tough question, he knew how to artfully dodge it without being condescending.
He took over as general manager in ‘93, Buffalo’s final Super Bowl season, when Bill Polian left following a disagreement with owner Ralph Wilson. Butler was the antithesis of his predecessor, who was highly-skilled but had a prickly side.
It was the year before the NFL instituted a salary cap and it would prove his undoing.
Butler’s greatest strength, loyalty, undermined his tenure. He found it hard to get rid of the players who had taken the Bills to four straight Super Bowls, the last one over which he presided, and kept many of them too long and at too high a cost.
Over his last eight years in Buffalo, the team made the playoffs four times, but after the first postseason game in ‘95, it was four straight losses mostly because the roster became so depleted due to salary cap casualties.
San Francisco endured the same thing in the late ‘90s as a string of seven straight playoff seasons, including four trips to the NFC Championship Game, ended with 4-12 and 6-10 campaigns.
NOW THE Bills, in the midst of five playoff seasons in six years, find themselves up against the salary camp in a rapidly-improving AFC.
And, Thursday, general manager Brandon Beane addressed those concerns.
“We’re cap-tight … starting with the cap going down coming off of Covid,” he said. “We’re trying to work our way out so that we don’t have a tear-down … you see that happen with a team here or there (Bills and 49ers 15 years ago?) where it’s like ‘We can’t do any more … we’ve gotta get rid of some of these huge salaries’ and the only way to do it is to kick it further down the road and make it harder or start trading and releasing and taking the hit.”
But Beane added, “We’re trying not to do that, we want to be competitive every single year. Sometimes you’re not going to be able to add a big-ticket item every (season). I know it’s sexy to do that and we want as many talented players as we can get but we’ve got to be fiscally responsible because, if not, it will pile up and some of the jerseys people are wearing (now), those players aren’t going to be with us.
“We’re trying to be smart and find people that fit. We’re not necessarily done, there are a lot of free agents out there, we’re having conversations and there could be even more cap casualties (from the Bills roster) as guys are added.”
SO WHERE does Buffalo stand according to the NFL parameters?
“Our cap figure is ($9 million)ish,” Beane said, “but last year the practice squad was $3½ million, and your draft picks go into that, so I don’t have $9½ million just sitting there, and there are replacement costs when guys get injured during the season and you’re holding four or five million for that.
“We still have money, you just have to be smart … if we spend too much of that it means we’re going to have to find more people to restructure, not that I’m against it, but the more you do, the bigger that avalanche gets down the line.”
He also emphasized, “Free agency is not over, sometimes you see guys that don’t get something that they want and decide to wait until after the draft because they feel like, if they play for (an unsatisfying offer) and get drafted over (via a more talented player) they’re stuck in a situation (where they could be waived). So sometimes it drags into May, guys (currently on the roster) get drafted over and are released or traded.”
MEANWHILE, Buffalo is facing a challenge in its own division.
“I think the last couple of years it’s really been tightening up and it’s not been easy,” Beane said. “Miami had a heck of a year last year, they had a little bit of a skid when the quarterback got hurt. The Jets, their defense was very salty last year, they created some issues for us in New York and even here, it’s not like we were moving the ball up and down in either of those games.
“You understand every year people are going to come after you, especially if you’ve won it. We’ve won the division three years in a row and it’s going to get harder and harder every year. We feel we’ve got some good continuity and we’re just trying to add the right pieces. But we understand winning the (AFC) East, this may be the toughest year yet to try and pull that off.”
(TOMORROW: The Bills’ off-season moves)
(Chuck Pollock, a Times Herald senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@oleantimesherald.com)
