Today is one of the sneakiest days on the NFL offseason schedule: the void year deadline. For the Buffalo Bills, it means several contracts will officially trigger their automatic voids for 2026 and beyond. When that happens, any remaining prorated bonus money doesn\u2019t disappear \u2014 it accelerates onto the 2026 salary cap.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s where things stand:<\/p>\n
\u2022 LB Matt Milano: $11 million dead cap
\u2022 C Connor McGovern: $4.8 million dead cap
\u2022 DT DaQuan Jones: $3.7 million dead cap
\u2022 DE A.J. Epenesa: $2.8 million dead cap
\u2022 DE Joey Bosa: $7.2 million dead cap<\/p>\n
Void years are a useful cap-management tool. They allow teams to spread signing bonus money over additional \u201cvoid\u201d years to lower the immediate cap hit. It\u2019s a cost-effective solution for high contract values during the contract period. But if a player is not extended before the void date, the remaining prorated bonus accelerates into the current league year.<\/p>\n
For Buffalo, this represents more than $29 million in dead-cap space hitting the 2026 books from these five contracts alone. Most significantly, that figure reprsents money allocated to players no longer under contract.<\/p>\n
Now, acceleration doesn\u2019t necessarily mean panic. President of football operations\/general manager Brandon Beane has consistently used void years as part of his cap strategy, often pairing them with extensions or restructures. The question is whether any of these players return on new deals that effectively \u201coffset\u201d the accelerated hits. The money is always due eventually, it\u2019s only a question of when.<\/p>\n
Milano\u2019s number is the headline. Bosa\u2019s is significant. For \u201cthe cap is not real\u201d crowd, the void-year bill has arrived.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today is one of the sneakiest days on the NFL offseason schedule: the void year deadline. For the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":757037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[56856,5165,2091,7,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-757036","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-buffalo-bills-salary-cap","9":"tag-buffalo-bills-free-agency","10":"tag-buffalo-bills-roster","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116083069045867073","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=757036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/757037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}