Examining the Bills financial health in 2026 and beyond

ORCHARD PARK, NEW YORK - SEPTEMBER 28: General manager Brandon Beane of the Buffalo Bills looks on prior to the NFL 2025 game between New Orleans Saints and Buffalo Bills at Highmark Stadium on September 28, 2025 in Orchard Park, New York. (Photo by Bryan Bennett/Getty Images) | Getty Images

The Buffalo Bills are cruising through OTAs right now with plenty of new players, and while that's happening, let's assess how financial healthy this team is now and into the future.

Examining the books is an important evaluation every year, and with summer break shortly ahead for the entire NFL, now is a good time to do it.

Ok, let's dive in.

Here's how the Bills stand in cap space in the current league year:

2026 Top 51 (current)

$10M in cap space
(NFL Average: $21.9M)

$46M in dead money
(10th-most in NFL)

That $10M is essentially nothing given that Beane has liked to keep a little extra change in his pocket in case he's compelled to sign a journeyman or two or make a trade-deadline acquisition during the season. Given that the Bills were more than $10M in the hole in mid February, and Beane and Co. did admirable work getting cleanly under the cap with room to sign the (rather sizable) draft class and enter the month of May with financial breathing room.

How I view cap space fluctuates based on the time of year. In March, it's a luxury. In May, having loads of cap room is typically a sign of two things - a team doesn't have enough good players to be making big money and/or said team hasn't spent as much as it should in hopes of constructing the best possible roster.

For the second or third year in a row, the Bills weren't huge spenders in free agency and will enter the summer near the cap limit, which is precisely where they should be given their championship contender status.

2027 - $56M in cap space

Yes, you're reading that correctly - that is negative $56M. But if you notice, it's not a Top 51 allotment right now, because we don't know who the Top 51 contracts will be a year from now. That's how sites like Spotrac and OverTheCap list/rank for cap space into the future.

Based on a projected $327M NFL-wide cap in 2027 and applying the straightforward Top 51 rule - in which only the current Top 51 contracts count toward said cap - the Bills' 2027 cap allocations equal $359M, which equates to an effective cap space amount of -$32M for the team.

That means, once again, the Bills will get in plenty of exercise jumping through accounting hoops to get cap compliant for 2027.

Potential restructures and savings

• Josh Allen: $10.5M
• Dion Dawkins: $11.9M
• Ed Oliver $11.1M
• Greg Rousseau: $11.5M
• DJ Moore: $16.7M
• Terrel Bernard: $5.1M
• Christian Benford: $10.2M

Potential cuts and savings

• Dion Dawkins: $11.1M
• Ed Oliver: $5.7M
• Josh Palmer: $5.8M
• Michael Hoecht: $4.7M
• Tyler Bass: $4.3M

Extension candidates and potential savings:

• Dion Dawkins: $14.3M
• Spencer Brown: $10.9M
• Dalton Kincaid: $5.5M
• Christian Benford: $10.9M

Team option decisions:

• Dawson Knox:$3.4M of $5.9M base salary guarantees on 2/15/2027

I purposely listed a variety of financial paths the Bills can take for the same player because, frankly, in the NFL, we never know what's going to happen, and it's important for a team to understand its options. While I did include Benford in two of the three categories, I very much highly doubt Buffalo would want to increase future-year cap hits for him with a restructure or extension considering those hits in 2027, 2028, and 2029 are already $19.4M, $20.1M, and $20.4M respectively, and the latter year represents his Age 29 season. Yet some accounting aerobics on Benford's deal... not out of the question.

For the sake of this article, let's use the Allen restructure - which will essentially be a transaction you can count on each year through his prime - to save $10.5M, a Rousseau restructure for $11.5M, a Spencer Brown extension for $10.9M in savings, and Josh Palmer and Michael Hoecht cuts for a combined $10.5M. That equates to $43.4M in created cap space. That $43.4M minus $32M is $11.4M, which is almost exactly where the Bills are cap-space wise today.

Of course some of those hypothetical moves along with the addition of a small collection of cheap free agents that has become the recent norm in the Beane era could alter the Top 51. But not much.

Vitally, the Bills are one of 26 teams that currently do not have any dead-cap hits for the 2027 league year currently. And the hypothetical Hoecht and Palmer cuts would create $7.2M of it. While dead cap has become the cost of doing business in today's NFL - every team has it - Buffalo has oscillated on this front over the past three seasons. For a team like the Bills that has to do plenty of work to get cap compliant each year because of the amount of high-caliber, high-priced players on the roster, limiting dead cap is key.

Here is Buffalo's dead-cap situations over the past five seasons:

2022: $25M, 22nd-most

2023: $10M, 31st-most (desirable)

2024: $75M, 3rd-most (undesirable)

2025: $39.6M, 19th-most

2026: $46.1, 10th-most

Dead cap is almost unavoidable in this day and age, yet with the likes of Matt Milano, Taron Johnson, and Joey Bosa off their books after the 2026 campaign, the Bills should place a major priority on limiting their dead-cap pool of money to help maximize their ability to re-sign their own and give them some flexibility during the free-agent period next March.

I can't write that the Bills are incredibly financially healthy right now, but for a team with an MVP-caliber quarterback and 10 homegrown talents playing on their second or third contracts with the team, peeking ahead to 2027, Buffalo is in a reasonably good financial situation.

And assessing how financially healthy an NFL team is - short-term or long-term - must always be done with context regarding where that team is in its timeline.

And the Bills should be spending right to the cap every season.