Bills GM explains reasoning for trading WR Stefon Diggs

Buffalo Bills general manager Brandon Beane recently broke down his reasoning for dealing wide receiver Stefon Diggs in the 2024 NFL offseason.

Buffalo Bills wide receiver Stefon Diggs (14) can t make the catch on this deep throw by Josh Allen. / Jamie Germano/Rochester Democrat and

The prospect was unthinkable.

Few members of the Buffalo faithful genuinely thought the Buffalo Bills would part ways with Stefon Diggs in the 2024 NFL offseason. That was simply media-driven nonsense, right? Sure, the perennial Pro Bowler’s 2023 season did not conclude in the way that he—or many others—would have liked, but there was simply no way the Bills were going to trade their fourth-all-time leading receiver, especially not when he, on several occasions, has expressed his desire to retire with the franchise.

Besides, his contract was unmoveable. Trading the 30-year-old would see Buffalo take on over $30 million in dead cap. The idea of a team with championship aspirations allocating over $30 million of its salary cap to a player no longer on the roster was unfathomable.

And then it happened.

The Bills traded Diggs to the Houston Texans in early April, packaging the wideout with a sixth-round pick in the 2024 NFL Draft and a fifth-round selection in next year’s draft to land a second-round choice in the 2025 draft. 

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The trade, sure, netted Buffalo an additional premium pick in a future draft. It also left its receiving corps without a bonafide primary target and its salary cap in a less-than-ideal state.

The Bills ate $31 million in dead cap by dealing Diggs; that’s $31 million—or roughly 12% of the salary cap—allotted to a player who will not take a snap for the team in the 2024 NFL season. It’s, to be kind, a bold strategy for a team that hopes to compete for the Super Bowl.

But it’s one that Bills general manager Brandon Beane is confident in. Buffalo removed the final three years of Diggs’s contract from its books by trading him to the Texas metropolis; as opposed to paying a seemingly disgruntled player roughly $25 million over the next three years, Beane simply decided to take his salary cap medicine in 2024 and be rid of the deal in future years.

The executive spoke about his decision during a recent appearance on The Athletic Football Show podcast, stating that it made sense from both football and financial perspectives.

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“I think there’s a lot of things you weigh,” Beane said. “A player of his caliber, you weigh a lot of things on the situation. Ultimately, we just talked about the cap, you make moves, 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, and we think we can compete and do what we need to do by eating it now and then not walk into next year [with issues].

“If we didn’t, if we tried to come up with some way and split it up in too many different ways, now it’s just like that albatross 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 went on to state that decisions regarding when to move on from a player and how to divvy up their remaining money were made on a case-by-case basis, using veteran cornerback Tre’Davious White as an example. The team released him in March with a post-June 1 designation.

“Listen, we kind of weighted that knowing with Tre’Davious White, we did a June 1 deal with him,” Beane said. “We could’ve eaten all of his [cap] now. We’re just trying to pick and choose which ones make sense to push a little bit off, whether it’s signing a player with a couple of void years, whether it’s using one of our bullets of a June 1 release with Tre’Davious, but not trying to go all the way that way, whether it was Stef’s deal or some of the other deals. 

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“We’ve tried to have a balance, and that’s looking at the spreadsheet, the balance sheet, for what’s [20]25 look like? What’s [20]26? Even how we do our voids; we’ve been, the last couple of years, trying to strategically not have all those come due in one year, to where that can happen—this void ends in [20]25, this one ends in [20]26, this one’s in [20]27, where, again, same thing.”

Though Buffalo went through a bit of a transition in the offseason, it perhaps set itself up for longer-term success by recentering its core around youth while freeing up eventual salary cap flexibility. Sustainable success—and maximizing the championship window of Josh Allen—is, according to Beane, the ultimate motivation behind every decision he makes.

“I’m super competitive,” Beane said. “I’m going to be ripping myself the minute we walk into a year and I feel like we have to play with one arm tied around our back because the cap is what it is. I am on Kevin Meganck, who runs our cap and does a great job, I’m on him all the time of, ‘How do we do this? How do we work this?’ Because we got Josh Allen, and we want to compete every single year for a championship.”