Bills roster reset: What does a busy free agency period mean for the team moving forward?
What the Bills' moves say about their plans for 2025 and 2026.
www.nytimes.com
After a surge of activity with the beginning of free agency last week, the NFL has calmed down as teams begin to turn their attention to the draft. And the Bills certainly didn’t stand idly by last week.
Because they could contend for the Super Bowl again next year, they took care of several homegrown players with long-term contract extensions while adding pieces to their top two glaring needs for 2025, help at wide receiver and along the defensive line.
With several acquisitions and roster filling done over the past week, what stood out most about Buffalo’s approach and what does it signal moving forward?
Here’s a Bills roster reset after the first few waves of free agency.
The high-risk, high-reward defensive line moves
If there was one defining characteristic of their maneuvers this offseason, it was the clear and expected attempt to improve their defensive line to try to get more pressure on the opposing quarterback. It wasn’t quite the overhaul that we’ve seen the Bills do to that group as in past years, but it was enough to replace half of their top eight, and they likely aren’t done there with an addition or two via the draft likely being on the way. The trio of defensive ends Joey Bosa and Michael Hoecht, along with defensive tackle Larry Ogunjobi all have their individual cases for optimism, but all the same, have far more risks in their profiles than we’ve seen the Bills try in free agency in the past.Most of it revolves around Bosa and Ogunjobi, who are entering the final chapters of their careers.
Bosa turns 30 this summer and remarked multiple times how he’s getting older and has an emphasis on winning. Undoubtedly, his hard-hitting playing style, and the byproduct of that approach, have placed even more risk into his profile. Injuries are a massive part of Bosa’s story over the last several seasons and help explain why he has not quite been the player he was earlier in his career.
Ogunjobi’s best individual season was multiple years ago, back when he was with the Bengals, and he didn’t have quite the same level of impact after signing with the Steelers in 2022. Ogunjobi turns 31 this summer, which bakes some more risk into the signing.
On top of that, not having Ogunjobi and Hoecht for the first six games of the year due to a PED suspension is a risk in itself. While the organization hopes these two rotational pieces will pick right up and make an impact upon their return, losing six games of a season is never ideal and hurts Buffalo’s rotational depth immediately.
However, due to all the risk involved, the Bills wound up getting them all to more manageable deals than others at their position. For the 27-year-old Hoecht, they hope he can be a rotational piece for multiple seasons. As for Bosa and Ogunjobi, the bet is that they have one more ceiling outcome commensurate with their past in-prime seasons. Both Bosa and Ogunjobi spent last season in an odd-man front which shifted their alignments of how the Bills would use them. General manager Brandon Beane seemed optimistic about Bosa and Ogunjobi because of how they’ve performed in even-man fronts in the past, which is what the Bills employ, or how they project to that role for the upcoming year.
The risk remains considerate, but to the Bills’ credit, this is unlike how they’ve approached past free agency attempts. They’ve tried some low-cost deals for risky players in the past, but that hasn’t taken up much of their cap space to do them. Several of those risks have been worth it and worked out well.
The Bills simply raised the stakes by pushing cap space toward the same principle in the hopes of finding a steal of a deal on the open market without any of that risk extending into 2026. Calculated risks, but with a few more chips pushed into the middle of the pot.
If they hit, especially Bosa, that has the potential to give the team one of its best edge rushing groups since head coach Sean McDermott and Beane arrived. If they don’t hit, it’s worth wondering if the investment in a pair of higher-risk players with what little cap space the Bills had was the right decision in a go-for-it year.
Cornerback has more questions than any other position
While they kept their early draft intentions hidden based on their moves so far, there’s no doubt that opening day cornerback has the most uneasiness. The Bills have turned over half of their boundary cornerback room. Last year’s starter Rasul Douglas remains unsigned in free agency, and the team’s top reserve, Kaiir Elam, was dealt to Dallas in a classic change-of-scenery trade to recoup some draft assets for a failed first-round pick.All that remains is top starter Christian Benford and fourth cornerback Ja’Marcus Ingram, who was mostly a special teams asset throughout the 2024 season. Although the Bills did bring back Dane Jackson, who they trust within their defensive scheme to start if they need him to, Jackson was a fringe starter even during his first stint in Buffalo, and even more so now after not cracking the starting lineup consistently in Carolina last season. They could still try to bring Douglas back if his market isn’t there. Plus, there is still enough time, where circumstances with other teams may change after the draft, to find a different veteran starting option, but that hasn’t emerged to this point.
Even beyond that, it’s a murky situation. Benford’s rookie deal expires after the upcoming season, and unlike the trio of Khalil Shakir, Terrel Bernard and Greg Rousseau, the Bills have yet to get anything done with their top cornerback despite the likely intention of wanting to do so. Benford’s price tag has likely gone up as well, as the cornerback market has been reset a couple of times this offseason, most recently with the Texans signing Derek Stingley Jr. to an extension reportedly worth $30 million per season.
The ideal time for the Bills to get something done with Benford is before the regular season, or a few games in, before Benford proves even more valuable. Where he is on his career arc is right near where right tackle Spencer Brown was last year, just before signing his extension. Brown has since outplayed that value just one year into the long-term pact. But if the Bills can’t get anything done, that leaves them without a single boundary cornerback signed for the 2026 season. That must change and likely will by the end of the 2025 NFL Draft. While that doesn’t necessitate a first-round pick, cornerback should be on the shortlist of one of their first three selections this year.
The Bills didn’t tip their draft hand
After the additions of Bosa, Ogunjobi, Hoecht, Jackson and wide receiver Joshua Palmer, the team added critical pieces to its 2025 attempt at winning the Super Bowl. However, with this particular edition of the Bills roster, there isn’t a crying need for an immediate starting impact from a rookie.The Bills also know how fickle a first season can be, particularly when the player is drafted in the late stages of the first and second rounds. And because of that, even if cornerback looks like the most glaring need at the moment, it doesn’t mean the Bills are going to spend their top draft resource there out of necessity. However, including cornerback, there are several positions that could welcome a rotational player or better for 2025. And due to age or expiring contracts, many of those positions need a long-term, cost-controlled piece that will eventually crack the starting lineup, whether in 2025 or further down the line.
Four positions seem like the best bet for the Bills to use early picks on in the upcoming draft. Here are the four, in no particular order.
Wide receiver — The Bills have the trio of Shakir, Keon Coleman and Palmer all signed through the 2027 season. Although Palmer provides them with more separation skills and deep-field ability than they had in 2024, he’s still just a rotational piece rather than someone who gives them a decided edge.
The team still lacks a receiving option who packs a punch to their passing attack, and they have a roster spot open for another player. Depending on how the draft board breaks in the first couple of rounds, they could add a young, versatile receiver with some potential for game-breaking ability.
Edge rusher — The Bills gave Rousseau a contract extension while signing Bosa and Hoecht to join A.J. Epenesa and Javon Solomon. With Bosa and Epenesa on expiring deals, and Hoecht possibly being nothing more than a rotational player, selecting an edge rusher in a draft year that is loaded with them presents an opportunity to cultivate that player’s talent in a confined role, rather than throwing him immediately into a starting position. That, plus Rousseau’s rich, long-term deal emphasizes finding a lower-cost counterpart who can elevate the pass rush.
One-technique defensive tackle — The Bills did not address this position in free agency and need someone to take over the starting role from DaQuan Jones in 2026. This year’s draft has plenty of options to find a run-stuffing player for the middle of their line, and with that type of talent, the Bills could use one of their first three picks on it
Cornerback — With Benford’s future uncertain for now, drafting a boundary cornerback will be essential next month until anything changes with Benford. And even if they sign him long-term, finding a future starter with a low-cost rookie deal will be critical, considering how much they’d need to pay Benford.
The subtle nod toward keeping the winning window open past 2025
The Bills took some calculated swings to improve their 2025 roster, but most of them had something in common. Outside of the Palmer and Hoecht signings, the rest of the Bills’ external free agents were only one-year deals. While the team has nothing nailed down past 2025 with two of its biggest signings this offseason, the Bills made up for achieving as much cap flexibility in 2026 as possible while having most of their core starters intact and signed through at least next season. How did they address that future cap flexibility the most? It shows up in both an obvious and a subtle way.The first point of flexibility is how many borderline contracts the Bills can easily get out of next offseason for real cap savings. The Bills have six contracts they could move on from for various logical reasons. Those six deals have at least $2.9 million each in savings for 2026, and the top four of those could save them $5 million or more each. That group includes left tackle Dion Dawkins, linebacker Matt Milano, tight end Dawson Knox, wide receiver Curtis Samuel, safety Taylor Rapp and kicker Tyler Bass. If the Bills released all six, it would yield $36.1 million in cap space in 2026.
The subtle way the Bills went about preserving that flexibility this offseason was by avoiding the temptation to touch any of those six contracts with a contract restructure. While it would have yielded immediate cap space for 2025 for another move or two, it would have zapped them of a precious resource to tap into next year, as all of those players, whether due to age, roster importance or both, could easily have a case to be released next year.
Why is that important? The Bills have no dead cap assigned to 2026, but that will change a few weeks leading up to the 2026 league year. The Bills have three contracts (defensive tackle DaQuan Jones, center Connor McGovern and defensive end A.J. Epenesa) expiring with void years that come due, which will put $11.39 million onto the 2026 cap and three key roster spots to fill.
The Bills can avoid some of that from hitting by negotiating a new deal with any of those three before the void year charges come due, but that’s not a certainty even if they’d like to do it. So, while they could have opened up some more space this year by restructuring one of those six deals, their measured and logical approach will prepare them for another offseason to add key pieces for another Super Bowl run.