Bills Make Bold Salary Cap Moves And Dolphins, Chargers, Saints, Broncos, Cowboys, Ravens And 49ers Are Next

One way to describe what the Buffalo Bills did on Wednesday is to call it a salary cap reset. Yes, artful.

Another way to describe it is to call it a bloodletting.

The Bills cut starting safety Jordan Poyer. They cut starting center Mitch Morse. They released core special team player Siran Neal and kick returner Nyheim Hines, as well as receiver Deonte Harty. Then the Bills set a post-June 1 release on starting cornerback Tre'Davious White, who has had consecutive season-ending injuries in 2022 and '23.

That wasn't all.

The Bills then reduced edge rusher Von Miller's pay to save $8.645 in cap space.

Von Miller #40  looks on during Bills training camp. (Photo by Joshua Bessex/Getty Images)

The Bills, in perhaps the NFL's worst salary cap situation at the start of the day, amputated approximately $40.6 million off their cap and are now within distance of cap compliance. And because the White move will give them an additional $4 million in cap space after June 1, they can use that money to sign their draft class then if necessary. 

The Bills still have to cut approximately $7 million more off their cap to reach the $255.4 million salary cap limit, but that should happen fairly easily – so much so that Buffalo already signed safety Taylor Rapp to a three-year contract extension and intends to sign Mitch Trubisky as their backup QB.

So this was salary cap surgery. But it was surgery from the 1860s when doctors used whiskey and saws.

And what we witnessed in Buffalo will happen to some degree with more than half-a-dozen other NFL teams currently over the cap. They similarly need to make moves to get into cap compliance by the start of the league year at 4 p.m. on March 13.

So what might that look like for those teams needing