The Buffalo Bills have begun the necessary steps to minimize their salary limit overage before the formal start of the 2024 NFL free agency period and, more importantly, the regular season. On Monday evening, Tom Pelissero broke the news that the Bills were converting left guard Connor McGovern’s current contract to guarantee his deal for 2024 while freeing up $3.74 million in salary space.
Spotrac later revealed more data about the McGovern conversion, stating that “The Bills converted $4.675 million of OL Connor McGovern’s 2024 base salary into signing bonus, adding 2 void years, and clearing $3.74 million of cap space this season.”
As of this writing (and before McGovern’s reported conversion), the Bills were somewhere between $41 million and $43.8 million above the cap (with a lesser figure of $36.7 million over, according to NFLPA figures and published in this tweet by Greg Tompsett of Cover 1). The lower amount indicates the offseason roster contracts for the top 51 contracts, while the larger figure represents the cost of the top 53 contracts.
The bad news is that Buffalo is still over the cap limit after accounting for the enlarged 2024 NFL salary cap, which contains $13 million more available money than previously estimated.
So, while the cap maximum figure for the upcoming season is beneficial, general manager Brandon Beane still has a lot of work to do to get One Bills Drive into compliance with the league-mandated wage cap. All of this comes before the team can even contemplate signing its own free agents, those from outside the club, or any of the potentially ten draft picks they welcome to Buffalo.
As in previous seasons, expect more moves like these to be done with the Bills’ current roster, taking advantage of restructures that add void years and stretch out the cap cost on numerous players’ contracts.
While not officially announced by the organization at this time, doing the arithmetic shows that the bills are now between $37.3 million and $40.1 million above the cap. The 2024 NFL salary ceiling is locked in at $255.4 million, a $13 million increase over what was previously expected.
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