In addition to the news that broke Wednesday regarding the release of John Brown, the Buffalo Bills also make some moves with a couple of their interior defensive linemen. According to Ian Rapoport, the Bills have released Quinton Jefferson and re-worked Vernon Butler’s contract to reduce his salary. The details on Butler’s pay cut are not yet revealed, but the release of Quinton Jefferson creates $6.5M in cap space for the Bills on top of the $7.9M saved from releasing John Brown.
Jefferson was acquired by the Bills last offseason in free agency at a surprisingly high price tag. Jefferson has some serious pass-rushing ability, but it was still a shock to see the Bills spend that much on a guy they were planning to use in a rotational role. Butler has a very similar story as he was also signed at a high price tag in free agency last offseason, but maybe this decision by the Bills simply came down to which one of the two was willing to take a pay cut to stick around.
Both Butler and Jefferson underperformed in 2020, but a lot of that underperformance stems from them playing out of position and without true 1-tech Star Lotulelei. Jefferson played on about 50% of the Buffalo Bills defensive snaps last year, while Butler played on about 40%. However, the Bills started to favor Butler to Jefferson in terms of snap count as the year progressed.
Looking forward, the Bills have created a serious amount of cap space in the last 48 hours with the release of both Jefferson and Brown, but also the pay cuts that Butler and Morse accepted. This creation of cap space could be used on signing a big-name free agent, but the Bills may be more interested in acquiring multiple mid-level free agents rather than one big-name free agent.
After the release of Jefferson and Brown, the next candidate to be either released or proposed to take a pay cut is Mario Addison. The Buffalo Bills could create an additional $6.1M by releasing Addison, but this would create a void at the edge rusher position that would need to be filled this offseason. That is why the Bills might be more willing to negotiate a pay cut with Addison in order to retain as much talent as possible on this roster while mitigating the cost.
Additionally, the release of Jefferson may put the Bills in the market for a 3-tech interior defensive linemen in the draft. Prior to this release, Bills fans and draft analysts had been targeting 1-tech prospects for the Bills, but this move changes that narrative a bit.