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If the Buffalo Bills want to keep linebacker Tremaine Edmunds, it may mean parting ways with a different first-round defensive player, one insider speculates.
The Bills are facing an offseason with a number of difficult decisions, and the hardest may be what to do with Edmunds. The Pro Bowl linebacker is headed to free agency in March, but Syracuse.com’s Matt Parrino wrote that the Bills could free up the money needed to keep him — if they’re willing to get rid of defensive tackle Ed Oliver.
Bills Could Trade Oliver
As Parrino noted, the Bills will likely need to explore several avenues in order to get under the salary cap and find the space needed to sign draft picks and free agents. He noted that the team is currently $16.5 million over the cap, though could have some simple solutions like restructuring the contracts of Josh Allen and Von Miller to make up much of that room.
But he also suggested that the BIlls could trade Oliver, the former No. 9 overall pick.
“[Oliver is] an excellent player and he’s been a key cog up front since drafted in 2019. The problem is that he’s likely going to earn north of $14 million per season on his big extension that’ll come sometime in the next 12 months,” Parrino wrote. “He’s going to earn $10.7 million on the fifth-year option, but the Bills can erase that number and add it to their cap space if they trade him.”
Parrino added that Oliver has not emerged as the “chaos creator” the Bills hoped he would be when he was drafted. Oliver is averaging just 3.5 sacks per season, and while he has made a difference in ways that go beyond the stat sheet, the Bills could choose to keep Edmunds over Oliver.
“There is little chance that [general manager Brandon] Beane, [head coach] Sean McDermott and [defensive coordinator] Leslie Frazier want to remove Oliver from their defense, but there are tough decisions that must be made,” Parrino wrote. “What if that $10 million of space is used to re-sign Tremaine Edmunds? Is Edmunds more important to the defense? That’s a question the Bills’ decision-makers must answer inside the building.”
Edmunds Not Sure About Return to Buffalo
Edmunds has expressed uncertainty about his own future in Buffalo, telling Henry McKenna of Fox Sports that he is looking forward to hitting free agency for the first time and testing his value in the open market.
The Pro Bowler seemed to look at his pending free agency as a challenge, a chance to prove himself.
“I honestly like when people underestimate me, you know what I mean? Like it brings out the best in me,” Edmunds said. “That’s what keeps me going day in and day out because I always work to prove people wrong. So if somebody says I can’t do it, like I’m gonna do everything I can to make sure I prove this person wrong, because they’re gonna come back and circle back and be like, ‘You know what, I was wrong about you man.’ But that’s what keeps me going day in and day out.”
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