The Buffalo Bills created $6.18 million in cap space for this season with the big contract extension for Stefon Diggs.
The deal currently gives the Bills $7.2 million in cap space for the upcoming season, according to the sports financial website Spotrac.com. The Bills will need about $1.9 million of that cap space total to sign their draft choices before training camp.
Diggs was going to cost $17.9 million against the cap under the terms of his former deal. Now he will cost $11.7 million in space this year.
The four-year, $96 million contract has an average of $24 million and includes $70 million guaranteed. He got a $21.5 million signing bonus. There isn’t any “phony money,” or an inflated salary at the end of the contract that boost the numbers.
Diggs’ cap hits in future years of the deal are: $20.2 million in 2023, $26.5 million in 2024, $26 million in 2025, $27 million in 2026 and $21.2 million in 2027.
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The Bills theoretically could get out of the deal after three years, after the 2024 season. The dead cap hit at that point, $18 million, could be spread over two years. That clearly, however, would not be the Bills’ preferred course. The way NFL contracts work, it's a year-to-year deal that will be open to restructuring after three years.
The Bills have space, along with ways to create a little more, to think about extending a veteran’s contract before the start of the regular season in September. Tight end Dawson Knox, safety Jordan Poyer and linebacker Tremaine Edmunds are top candidates for an extension entering the last year of their contracts.
There are various ways to measure the rankings of contracts by position. Technically, Diggs’ deal ranks fourth among NFL wide receivers by average annual value, according to Spotrac.com. But that’s not usually a measure of what players wind up receiving. A better measure is total guaranteed money.
By that measure, Diggs ranks second to Miami’s Tyreek Hill, who just got a deal with $72.2 million total guaranteed. Miami gave Hill a contract with a $30 million average over four years, tops among receivers. Subtracting an inflated final year of the deal, however, shows that Hill’s realistic average is $25 million over three years.
Davante Adams, recently acquired by Las Vegas in a trade with Green Bay, has a new deal worth a $28 million average. However, Diggs’ guaranteed total surpasses that of Adams, who gets $65.6 million total guaranteed. Realistically, Adams’ deal is for three years and $67.5 million (a $22.5 million average), and it’s assured that it will need to be renegotiated at that point.
Arizona’s DeAndre Hopkins is playing on a deal that averages $27.2 million over a two-year extension.
The Diggs contract didn’t eat up much more Bills cap space for the 2023 season than already was allotted. Diggs’ old deal was going to count $18 million in 2023.
