The Buffalo Bills have granted receiver Cole Beasley permission to seek a trade, a league source confirmed Friday to The Buffalo News.
The request was first reported by the NFL Network. The Bills have not closed the door on a return to Buffalo by Beasley, according to NFL Network reporter Mike Garofolo.
Beasley, who turns 33 in April, has a contract for 2022 that the Bills probably would want to adjust, at the least.
He’s due to count $7.6 million against the salary cap. Considering the Bills’ cap crunch, he’s a candidate for a pay cut. Buffalo General Manager Brandon Beane probably will want to create about $30 million in cap space over the course of the upcoming offseason.
Buffalo would save $6.1 million against the cap if Beasley is traded or released. He’s due to make a base salary of $4.9 million, which he could be asked to reduce if he were to stay.
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“I haven’t really spoken to Cole personally or anything liker that,” Beane told Bills beat reporters Tuesday at the NFL scouting combine. “We’ll just take it day by day. We are going to have some tough decisions to make across the roster, whether they’re straight cuts, restructures, extensions. We’re going to look at a lot of areas with these guys as we move forward.”
That's quite a different tone from the one Beane struck at his end-of-season news conference.
"Cole, he’s still under contract so we didn’t, I didn’t, sit down with Cole at the end and see where he was at or things like that, but I would anticipate Cole being back," the GM said a few days after the season ended.
Beasley likely can find some kind of market for a trade to another team because of his production in 2021.
He caught 82 passes last season for 693 yards and one touchdown. Beasley ranked No. 2 in the NFL in catches out of the slot with 69, behind only the Los Angeles Rams’ Cooper Kupp. His overall catch total ranked 19th in the NFL.
However, his yardage total decreased rather significantly from 967 in 2020 to 693, and his touchdowns dropped from four to one. Beasley's yards per catch of 8.5 tied his rookie season in 2012 with Dallas as a career low. While Beasley played 65% of the offensive snaps last season, his playing time decreased later in the year as the Bills’ took advantage of Isaiah McKenzie’s speed in the attack. Over the last five games, counting playoffs, Beasley averaged 45% of the snaps.
"Cole can still play," Beane said at the end of the season. "Middle of the year we had some lulls and then late Isaiah played some roles in some games where (former offensive coordinator Brian) Daboll thought the jet motion, the jet sweeps, if it was press-man, Isaiah running across the formation or whatever it was, deep overs, that that was a better matchup.
"Sometimes Isaiah, when he got his chances, he made plays. I think that kind of took Cole out of the game sometimes just for our running stuff and as we got our running game going a little bit down the stretch, we just felt Isaiah really helped that because the stuff behind the line of scrimmage is harder for these linebackers or whoever the safety coming down to read, and it’s not a way we would use Cole. Cole can still play and he’ll continue to play in this league. His diminished snaps was just more where our offense was at the time. We had a lot of pieces."
McKenzie is set to become a free agent this month, but a departure by Beasley would increase his chances of getting a good deal from the Bills to come back.
Beasley has caught 231 passes over the past three seasons for the Bills, making him one of Beane's better acquisitions in free agency. He's not been without controversy, though. Beasley was outspoken about the NFL's Covid-19 protocols, so much so that he became the unofficial voice of vaccine hesitancy in the league. He threatened to retire last June if the league conducted the 2021 season with drastically different rules in place for players who have been vaccinated versus those who have not. Coincidentally, the league on Thursday announced that all Covid-19 protocols have officially been suspended.
Beasley never did follow through on his retirement threat. He also went back on his vow to stay off social media several times, although he has since deleted his Twitter account.
News Sports Reporter Jay Skurski contributed to this report.
