Why this worked for the Bills...
The Buffalo Bills traded Marcell Dareus to theJacksonville Jaguars on Friday night. While the team netted a sixth round draft pick, they also added a lot of salary cap space. Here’s the breakdown.

2017

Buffalo pays Dareus $3.66 of his salary plus a $250,000 workout bonus and saves approximately $6 million dollars in salary. Buffalo won’t have to pay 10/16ths of Dareus’ $9.75 million salary. They have already paid his pro-rated portion of the signing bonus for the year and his workout bonus.

2018

Here is where Buffalo gets saddled with a big $14.2 cap hit. That’s the remaining money from Dareus’ signing bonus. To offset that, the Bills won’t have to pay $9.9 million salary or the $6.4 million portion of his signing bonus already accounted for. Buffalo saves about $2 million, all told, in 2018.

2019

Dareus had a $16.6 million cap hit in 2019. All of that is off the books now. Buffalo won’t have to pay him $8.3 million in salary and won’t have any residual cap hits.

2020

Just like 2019, Dareus won’t count at all. $12.35 million in salary and a $1.4 million portion of his signing bonus is wiped out. His $14.65 million cap hit is gone.

2021

The final year of his contract, Dareus was owed$12.4 million in salary. That’s the Jaguars problem now.

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