The Buffalo Bills overhauled their defense this offseason, adding numerous players who have no connection to former head coach Sean McDermott. That might be a welcome sign for some of us who were growing tired of seeing familiar old faces like Shaq Lawson and Dane Jackson come back for second turns with the club.
Am I cherry-picking by leaving out Tre’Davious White and Jordan Poyer, whose second acts with the Bills were more successful? Yes, yes I am. The Bills even added a player from one of their
great AFC rivals, poaching an edge rusher who was released in February. The last time the Bills added a player from that team, it was safety Mike Edwards, and it didn’t turn out well for either the team or the player.
In today’s installment of “91 players in 91 days,” we discuss a veteran edge player who will have to prove himself worthy of remaining with the Bills through September.
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Name: Mike Danna
Number: 51
Position: OLB
Height/Weight: 6’2”, 261 pounds
Age: 28 (29 on 21/1/2026)
Experience/Draft: 6; selected by the Kansas City Chiefs in the fifth round (No. 177 overall) of the 2020 NFL Draft
College: Central Michigan
Acquired: Signed with Buffalo on 5/11/2026
Financial situation (per Spotrac): Danna’s one-year contract is worth $1,402,500 overall. Thanks to the veteran’s salary benefit, Buffalo’s cap hit if Danna makes the 53-roster counts slightly less than that, as it comes in at $1,262,500. That’s also the total guaranteed amount on the contract, so Buffalo will eat that figure as a dead-cap charge if Danna is released.
2025 Recap: Danna spent last season with the Chiefs, his sixth year with the club that drafted him. It was the second year of a three-year, $24 million extension he had signed with Kansas City in April 2024.
Danna played 15 games last season, making 14 starts. He appeared on less than half of Kansas City’s defensive snaps for the first time since the 2021 season, and as a result, he had his worst year statistically. He tied career-lows with 25 tackles and three tackles for loss, and he set a new career low with just one sack. He did notch his first career interception, however, returning it for 10 yards against the Washington Commanders.
The two games he missed were early in the season, Weeks 3 and 4, thanks to a quadriceps injury he suffered during Kansas City’s Week 2 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles.
Positional outlook: Danna is one of eight players listed at outside linebacker on the current roster. T.J. Parker, Greg Rousseau, Bradley Chubb, Michael Hoecht, Javon Solomon, Andre Jones Jr., and Cade Denhoff are the others.
2026 Offseason: Danna is healthy and has participated in offseason work to date.
2026 Season outlook: Danna signed what essentially amounts to a fully guaranteed contract in May, so the Bills are going to eat his cap number whether he’s on the 53-man roster or not. The numbers crunch at OLB is tighter than it is at a lot of positions, though, as Buffalo will enter the season with Rousseau, Chubb, Parker, and Hoecht on the team barring some kind of injury or strange happenstance. That leaves room for one or two other edge players at most, and that may also depend on what the team decides to do at some other positions.
Will new defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard be a bit more multiple with his fronts? If he is, the Bills might keep an extra defensive end type who might seem like he’d be better suited for a four-man front. That would benefit Danna, who played in such a defense under Steve Spagnuolo in Kansas City. In that scenario, Buffalo might also go a little lighter on players listed at defensive tackle, especially with those “tweener” types who might not have a clear home along the line.
Between DTs and OLBs, I expect the Bills to keep 10 total players at most, and eight players at least. If we already have four locks in the players listed above, then we throw in clear roster locks at defensive tackle like Ed Oliver, Deone Walker, and T.J. Sanders, we’re already at seven players. I give Javon Solomon a leg up on the other outside linebackers thanks to his ability to play special teams at a high level combined with his untapped pass-rush upside. There’s eight right there, and we haven’t kept a backup down lineman or two.
In short, while Danna’s contract might say that he’s a shoo-in for the roster, his positional group and his fit in Buffalo’s defense tell me he’s more of a bubble player than anything else. Barring injury, I don’t anticipate that he’ll be on the roster once the season starts, but a strong preseason combined with some other players suffering some dings could change that outlook.
