Buffalo Bills: Josh Allen’s deal creates new challenges for Brandon Beane

There is no doubt that general manager Brandon Beane is happy about the fact that Josh Allen is going to be the starting quarterback for the Buffalo Bills through the 2027 season. The team was able to work out a massive contract extension for six years and was worth $258 million last week.

While the Bills general manager can breathe a sigh of relief knowing Allen isn’t going anywhere, it does create a new set of challenges for him. When Beane took over as general manager in 2017, the Buffalo Bills were not in a great salary cap position.

The Bills realized this and started shedding salary which resulted in a lot of dead cap that limited what they could do in 2018. However, it set them up to be in a better position moving forward and this allowed them to re-sign key players like Tre’Davious White, Dion Dawkins, and Matt Milano over the past few seasons.

One of the reasons they were able to make some of these moves, even with the salary cap dropping this season due to the pandemic, was because Josh Allen was still on his rookie deal. However, now that Allen will be commanding an average salary of $43 million per year, they lose some of that flexibility.

Beane spoke a little about what the strategy will be going forward by saying: “We have to do a really good job of finding young players that can play or guys on other teams that maybe fell out of favor and we can get them for a lesser cost.”

This likely indicates that the Buffalo Bills are not going to be spending big in free agency because they don’t necessarily have the cap space. There is plenty of uncertainly here but the salary cap is expected to return to growing significantly year over year that could make working around Allen’s new salary more manageable.

If that happens, it can help the Buffalo Bills but Brandon Beane has the right focus on what he needs to do to keep this team competitive.