Bills GM Gets Brutally Honest on Why Team Traded Stefon Diggs.
uffalo Bills general manager Brandon Beane knew the team was going to face a difficult decision on Stefon Diggs sooner or later — so he decided on sooner.
Beane spoke out about the team’s decision to trade Diggs to the Houston Texans, a move that took many by surprise. The Bills general manager explained that there were a number of factors in the decision, but it ultimately came down to the salary cap implications.
“A player of his caliber, you weigh a lot of things in those situations,” Beane said in an appearance on The Athletic Football Show. “But ultimately, we just talked about the cap. I don’t need to go through all the reasons why we decided to go ahead and do that. I would say, from a cap standpoint, we decided just to go ahead and eat it now.”
Bills Take Cap Hit for 2024
The Bills took a $31 million dead-cap hit by trading Diggs and lost close to $4 million in cap space for 2023, Cody Benjamin of CBS Sports noted. But the team also freed up close to $19 million for 2025 and added more talent in an effort to fill some of the void left by Diggs’ departure.
“We think we can compete and do what we need to do by eating it now,” Beane said. “And not next year. Because if we didn’t, if we tried to come up with some way to split it up too many different ways, then now it’s just like that albatross hanging on your neck all year. You look at your cap and you’re going, Look how much money we still have dead.”
