Buffalo Bills Safety Corey Graham Restructures Contract

Today, Buffalo Bills safety Corey Graham restructured his contract with the team. Details have yet to be disclosed.

Safety Corey Graham’s salary was going to count $4.7 million against the salary cap in 2016 before it was restructured today. He led the Bills in 2015 with 127 tackles and played pretty well considering he played a different position for the team the year prior. He did get burned a couple of times on passing plays but overall he had a great season at a new position. In regards to run defense, only six safeties who played over 100 snaps were rated higher than him by Pro Football Focus.

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The news today of the restructuring was far from a surprise. It was reported by Sal Capaccio of WGR 550 a week ago that this was in the works. Graham is not the only safety on the Bills roster who is likely to have his contract restructured. Sal Capaccio, in the same article, reported that the Bills are also looking to amend Leodis McKelvin’s deal to reduce his 2016 cap number of $4.9 million.

McKelvin has previously mentioned he would be open to taking a pay cut so you can expect something to get done in the near future. Tyler Dunne of the Buffalo News reported that McKelvin said “To me, my personality and how I feel I don’t want to be that guy. I don’t want to be that guy who leaves. I want to be that guy who stays here.” When pressed further on whether he would take a pay cut he said “I have a lot of money in the bank.”

There were talks that the Bills might be interested in signing Antonio Cromartie. It’s hard to imagine Cromartie being able to keep up with the elite wide receivers in the league with his declining performance this past year. He might find himself playing safety next season wherever he lands. It doesn’t make sense for the Bills to pursue Cromartie outside of the fact that Rex Ryan has a prior relationship with him and loves to sign his former players.

One idea floated by John Murphy on his nightly radio show is that maybe the Bills leaked that were interested in Cromartie in order to put more pressure on Graham and Leodis to restructure their deals. It would be impossible to prove that but it makes sense on many levels. With Graham restructuring today hopefully it means that McKelvin’s restructure is right around the corner.

“I have a lot of money in the bank.”

Now that Graham’s contract has been reworked, the Bills should have over $10 million in cap space. If the Bills were smart some of the money saved should be used to sign Richie Incognito before free agency opens on March 9th.

Stay tuned for more updates on Corey Graham’s restructured contract. Once the details are reported, we will make sure to update this article with those pertinent details of his amended contract.

***UPDATE

The details of Corey Graham’s restructured contract have emerged. The Bills only saved $600,000 towards this years salary cap which is a smaller amount than most people had estimated the team would save with a new deal.

They saved the money by converting both a $500,000 roster bonus and $700,000 in incentives on his deal into a signing bonus which can be amortized over the remainder of the contract. His base salary did not change. This could be why the Buffalo Bills had to release Leodis McKelvin to save $3.9 million in salary cap space.

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