Bills’ 2025 NFL Combine preview: Super Bowl aspirations, James Cook, and WR need
The Bills are very close to putting together a Super Bowl-winning team.
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The 2025 NFL Scouting Combine has arrived, and with it is the beginning of the Bills’ offseason march toward the goal they’ve been striving for since head coach Sean McDermott and general manager Brandon Beane arrived in 2017. The Bills have yet to make it to the Super Bowl under their direction, though following a mere three-point loss in the AFC Championship Game, last season was the closest they’ve been to playing for a title.
Although the draft prospect workouts and interviews are the surface-level reason for teams to send all their personnel to Indianapolis, the underlying storyline for the Bills is how they’ll shape their team for 2025. The Combine is where every NFL decision-maker and agent is in one place, where plenty of conversations are held, and where the feasibility of offseason ideas is examined.
It’s also the last notable media availability for McDermott and Beane ahead of all their upcoming offseason moves. As the event draws near, here are some things to monitor from a Bills perspective.
The Bills are on ‘big move’ watch
The Bills know they’re close. Fans know they’re close. The league knows they’re close, and they excelled in a year where they took their lumps by having a lot of dead money hit their 2024 salary cap and moving on from several key veterans.
The upcoming offseason is the polar opposite of 2024 due to several factors. They have the vast majority of their starting lineup under contract in 2025, and if not, they mostly have a replacement already in-house. Their internal free agents are not primary concerns despite being out of contract.
Cornerback Rasul Douglas is likely their most impactful loss of the group, but he is also a clear re-signing candidate. And most of all, unlike 2024, the Bills don’t have to take a hatchet to their roster just to get cap-compliant. Their starting point is around $10 million over the cap, while the 2024 cap deficit was more than triple that.
There are a handful of logical moves the Bills can make, without releasing any player off their roster, to find themselves with $30 million or more in cap space. The 2025 cap environment is night and day from what they faced in 2024.
If there’s an offseason from recent Bills memory to relate this one to, it’s 2022. That postseason served up the “13 seconds” defeat in Kansas City, which, before this past postseason, was likely the closest they felt to having the team and situation that could win the Super Bowl.
That ensuing offseason, the Bills swung for the fences and signed pass rusher Von Miller to a massive free-agent contract. It was a risk because they signed a then 32-year-old pass rusher, hoping he still had elite years remaining. The immediate returns were excellent, with Miller providing the consistent pressure the Bills have lacked since 2017. It came to a screeching halt once he suffered a torn ACL in November of the same season he signed, and he’s never been the same. The Bills certainly don’t regret the move, though if they are to do something big again, finding someone on a similar timeline to Josh Allen would be the heavy lean.
However, what’s equally important to remember is just because the Bills can make a big move doesn’t necessarily mean they will be able to do so this offseason, and expecting them to do so would be unwise. The right situation has to arise. They have to look for the right move for an impactful player with proven production who warrants the cost and doubles as a need, as well as what they believe to be a premium position. The list of players who qualify under those terms is small, and many of them are unavailable, which is why the Bills could go searching for a big prize but come up empty-handed.
Because of how public the situation has been, Cleveland defensive end Myles Garrett is the one to keep an eye on above all else. There’s a reason I had him as the big prize in my annual mock offseason. The Bills’ situation in the 2025 offseason is a stars-aligning type of scenario for a player of Garrett’s caliber to become available — if the Browns change their tune and look to trade him. Beane will likely not get into the hypotheticals of acquiring Garrett specifically. However, it will be interesting to hear how he responds to the notion of making a marquee move in the offseason, given all the information Beane has now. With Allen’s prime years becoming even more of a focus, finding a legitimate second star is logical and plausible.
Just how big of a need is WR?
The Bills completely flipped their outlook at wide receiver in 2024, moving away from separators and the notion of needing a number one to instead targeting an all-for-one, one-for-all approach. Or at least that’s how they sold it early on. But once they traded away Stefon Diggs and declined to make a stark move up the draft board, they really didn’t have a choice. By that point, notable free agents were already under contract and the rookie receiver they wound up with, Keon Coleman, was nowhere close to being ready to be their top target in the offense. The Bills also had to swallow a $31 million dead cap charge by trading Diggs.
But that “everybody eats” approach only lasted for so long. The 2024 receiver core initially consisted of Coleman, Khalil Shakir, Mack Hollins, Curtis Samuel and Marquez Valdes-Scantling. As good as Shakir has been for the Bills, they view him as a slot receiver through and through. On the boundary, the Bills lacked players who could consistently challenge defenders in the intermediate and deep areas of the field.
The Bills knew they had an issue and sent out a meaningful third-round pick to bring in Amari Cooper, though that ultimately didn’t work out. Cooper wasn’t on the field enough, perhaps due to a wrist injury, but when he was subbed in, he didn’t offer the consistent boundary separation they craved.
The biggest question for the combine is how much value the Bills place in finding someone who can challenge a defense vertically. There’s no doubt they played the AFC Championship Game without access to some of their playbook because they couldn’t challenge the Chiefs deep. How do they address that this offseason
How much do 2026 free agents factor into their decisions?
The Bills will undoubtedly have far more flexibility this offseason than in 2024 because of their salary cap situation and because they won’t have as many holes to fill due to a relatively tame internal free-agent group. So while it enhances their short-term outlook, the sneaky undercurrent is their group of 2026 free agents, many of whom play prominent roles for the team. That list includes running back James Cook, Shakir, defensive end Greg Rousseau, linebacker Terrel Bernard and cornerback Christian Benford. Those are the five most notable rookie deals expiring. On top of that, starting center Connor McGovern and left guard David Edwards also are free agents in 2026.
Why those could impact the Bills this offseason is because higher cap hits usually get pushed down the road from the original year signed, which could cut into their available cap space for those players in 2026 and 2027. It’s not a completely untenable situation, given that the Bills have six contracts they can get out of in 2026 with meaningful cap savings in Miller ($17.3 million), tight end Dawson Knox ($9.7 million), Samuel ($6.3 million), linebacker Matt Milano ($5.1 million), safety Taylor Rapp ($3.4 million) and kicker Tyler Bass ($2.9 million). But they also don’t want to gut their roster by doling out contract after contract over the next two offseasons. How much the 2026 class weighs on Beane could be telling into their moves this year.
The James Cook situation
One conversation that will inevitably come up this week is Cook’s public insinuation on social media that he’d like to be paid $15 million per year. As pointed out earlier, Cook is under contract for one more season — the final year of his rookie deal. But there’s no denying how important he was to the overall offensive picture in 2024. Beane will need to tread carefully, given the nuances of the entire picture.
The interesting thing about the Cook conversation, and ultimately how much they deem he’d be worth, is how much they believe he can grow. He had an incredibly efficient rushing season, maximizing his touches and producing a 1,000-yard season and 18 total touchdowns. Those are irrefutable facts. He’s proven to be excellent between the tackles and has solved many of his early-season concerns. The Bills even admitted they drafted him to be a pass-catching specialist, but he’s evolved to be their early-down back instead. The team seems very proud of him for how he’s developed.
However, there are three major things working against Cook’s desire to get paid $15 million per season. First, he plays a non-premium position, and a position the Bills have never given a huge contract to with Beane as the GM. Second, he played behind one of the best offensive lines in the NFL last year, and expecting that rushing and touchdown efficiency to continue year after year — especially after having only six touchdowns in 2023 — isn’t a safe bet. And third, Cook was the 1A option in a committee backfield in 2024 who mainly played on first and second downs and came off the field for passing situations on third down and late in halves. Cook maintained only a 47.5 percent snap share in games played, and for context, that is a far cry from the roles most of the league’s highest-paid running backs held. The lone exception is Detroit’s David Montgomery, who is also in a committee backfield and nowhere near the top of the highest-paid list.
The logical play is to see how the offseason plays out. If Cook gets pushed into a more significant role in 2025 and handles those added responsibilities well as a dynamic three-down back, the Bills would have to consider making him the first running back they’ve paid under Beane and McDermott. But as of now, despite his efficient rushing statistics, his role does not seem commensurate with becoming the second-highest-paid running back in the league. If he doesn’t develop into that high snap, three-down back, he might be one of the free agents they wave goodbye to in 2026. But it remains a delicate situation, given their hope to win a Super Bowl in 2025.