BUFFALO, N.Y. — The Bills are moving on from a key piece of their defense for many years, releasing starting nickelback Taron Johnson, a source told ESPN\u2019s Jeremy Fowler on Friday. Buffalo is also releasing wide receiver Curtis Samuel, a source told ESPN\u2019s Adam Schefter, as the Bills work to get cap compliant before the start of the league year.<\/p>\n
The combined moves will save the Bills just over $7.9 million in cap space (about $6 million from Samuel, $1.9 million from Johnson). The team will not be designating Johnson as a post-June 1 release, a source said. If they had done so, the Bills would have saved almost $7 million more.<\/p>\n
The releases come in the wake of the Bills trading for Samuel\u2019s former Carolina Panthers teammate DJ Moore on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Moving on from Johnson is one of the first significant moves as the Bills shift into a different defensive philosophy — from a 4-3 base to a 3-4 — under new coordinator Jim Leonhard. Under former Bills coach Sean McDermott for the past eight seasons, Johnson developed into the team\u2019s starting nickel cornerback.<\/p>\n
Johnson, 29, was part of president of football operations and general manager Brandon Beane\u2019s first draft class in Buffalo, selected in the fourth round in 2018. He cemented his role as a starter in 2020 after being benched during the season. Since 2020, no team has been in nickel more often than the Bills (83.4%), with a part of that due to Johnson\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n
He will always be remembered in Buffalo for his 101-yard pick-six against the Baltimore Ravens in the 2020 postseason.<\/p>\n
Leonhard said last month that he had spoken with Johnson and that he was excited about a potential change in position.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe knows that we\u2019re going to communicate with him,\u201d Leonhard said, \u201cand find out what\u2019s right because he\u2019s been an extremely productive player in the NFL, and now it\u2019s trying to find out what the best match of some of the things that I\u2019ve done in the past and what they did really well to feature a player like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Samuel\u2019s time with the Bills (2024-25) was riddled with injuries and not much success when on the field. He played in 20 regular-season games and caught 38 passes for 334 yards and two touchdowns while rushing for 14 yards on five carries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BUFFALO, N.Y. — The Bills are moving on from a key piece of their defense for many years,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":796831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2048],"tags":[215,214,53,87297,2086,111869,7,6,111868],"class_list":{"0":"post-796830","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-buffalo-bills","8":"tag-bills","9":"tag-buffalo","10":"tag-buffalo-bills","11":"tag-buffalo-bills-sports-football-team-team-statscom-324","12":"tag-buffalobills","13":"tag-curtis-samuel-sports-football-player-player-statscom-821389","14":"tag-football","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-taron-johnson-sports-football-player-player-statscom-830021"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116183842631569208","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796830","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=796830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}