This week, the Green Bay Packers completed a massive trade for Micah Parsons, one of the handful of NFL players who can claim to be the best in the league. The Dallas Cowboys were fleeced and should have extended him last offseason, then should have extended him this offseason, and now have shown their entire locker room that they are deeply unserious.
What would you have traded for Micah Parsons?
But we are a Buffalo Bills site, so that isn’t the focus of this article. If I was Bills general manager Brandon Beane, I absolutely would have made
a trade similar to this one. I don’t think Ed Oliver plus two firsts would have been enough, but even throwing in a player like A.J. Epenesa or another third-round pick or whatever would have made the compensation part worth it. Absolutely make the move.
Kenny Clark was the player the Packers sent to Dallas, and he’s a 30-year-old three-time Pro Bowler with three years left on his deal. Oliver is two years younger, but has never been named to the Pro Bowl, so I think it would have needed a sweetener for the Cowboys to save face. (It would have been interesting to add Joey Bosa as the extra player to open the rotation spot…)
Why didn’t the Bills trade for Micah Parsons?
So here’s the thing, the Bills weren’t able to trade for Micah Parsons. As much as certain folks in the media want to claim the salary cap doesn’t exist, it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the cap.
The Packers started Thursday with $23 million in cap space, meaning they could trade for Parsons and his $22ish million salary. Easy peasy. They now have less than $4 million in available cap space until the Parsons extension becomes official, but they had to fit him on their current cap in order to complete that trade and subsequent extension.
The Bills started Thursday $6 million over the cap, according to Spotrac. That is not possible under the CBA, so the Bills have made a move or two already to lower their cap number to be in compliance, we just don’t know about them. Here are some ways the Bills could have created enough cap space for Micah Parsons:
- Restructure Dion Dawkins (push $8.15 million in cap)
- Restructure Dawson Knox ($6.5 million)
- Restructure DaQuan Jones ($5.2 million)
- Restructure Connor McGovern ($3.3 million)
- Trade A.J. Epenesa ($6.1 million)
That would have created the $29 million in space the Bills needed to get Parsons under their 2025 cap.
The ripple effect would have obviously pushed the majority of those dead cap hits to the 2026 cap. Jones and McGovern are on expiring deals, and Knox has no more guaranteed money remaining and facing a release. That $15 million in dead cap would all hit in 2026, where Buffalo is currently projected to only have $8 million or so in cap space (without a Parsons extension, mind you).
The narrative around Brandon Beane and Micah Parsons
The real reason I decided to make this the topic of this weekend’s comments post is the discourse I have been seeing on Twitter. Like Brandon Beane was a major loser for not getting the deal done. I interacted with this post yesterday, so I went back to check today. And boy…
I already showed you the Bills could have done it. That doesn’t mean they should have done it. And I’m sure Mike wouldn’t necessarily disagree with that, but some of the responses.
Silly.
The Bills signed James Cook, Christian Benford, Michael Hoecht, Josh Palmer, Greg Rousseau, and Terrel Bernard to multi-year contracts this offseason and extended Josh Allen, too. That doesn’t even add in the one-year deals for Tre’Davious White, Larry Ogunjobi, Joey Bosa and Elijah Moore. Is that “just one player” now?
Catalana’s coworker is Dan Fetes, who is noted for his assurance that the salary cap is not real. Like I said earlier, you could have made the Parsons deal work. BUT. The salary cap is real in that there are consequences for those actions. There are players you can’t extend or sign in the future because you make the move.
The New Orleans Saints are going on their fifth straight season with absolutely no shot of making the playoffs after mortgaging for Drews Brees. Which, by the way, they went to one NFC Championship Game since their 2009 Super Bowl. One conference game appearance in 15 seasons despite having one of the best QBs ever is a teambuilding failure.
As the pushed cap hits from the last five years of Josh Allen contracts begins to snowball on their cap, there is nothing they can do to spread that out further. The bill comes due… always.
Would you have moved heaven and earth for Micah Parsons?
All that being said, I really think I would have tried to be the team to trade for Parsons. He’s that talented of a player and a closer. I would have absolutely signed off on losing players like Connor McGover, O’Cyrus Torrence, Dawson Knox, Joey Bosa, Matt Milano, and probably some more cuts a year from now.
But I can totally understand Beane’s approach of taking more swings at staying consistently set up for a run rather than a one-year all-in push with Parsons and Allen in 2025. He’s been consistent that he thinks the more times you kick the door, the more likely it is to get knocked in (to borrow his terminology).
Let us know what you think about the Bills’ strategy in the comments, and let us know if you’d have made all the moves necessary. Head to the comments to share your thoughts. Sign up for your own account here to leave a comment.
Welcome to the weekend, Buffalo Bills fans. After a long week, it’s time to blow off a little steam. Use this thread to talk about… well, whatever it is you’d like to talk about. Maybe you’d like to share a cool story from your week.
