The Buffalo Bills convert Connor McGovern’s 2024 salary into $3.74 million in cap space.

Before the 2024 NFL free agency period officially opens and the regular season itself, the Buffalo Bills have started the necessary effort to minimize their salary limit overage. The Bills were converting left guard Connor McGovern’s current contract to ensure his contract through 2024 while freeing up $3.74 million in salary space, as first reported by Tom Pelissero on Monday night.

“The Bills converted $4.675 million of OL Connor McGovern’s 2024 base salary into a signing bonus, adding 2 void years and clearing $3.74 million of cap space this season,” Spotrac said in a post that provided additional information regarding the McGovern conversion later on Monday.

The Bills were, as of writing (and before accounting for McGovern’s alleged conversion), between $41 million and $43.8 million over the cap (but NFLPA records and this tweet from Greg Tompsett at Cover 1 indicate a lower amount of $36.7 million over). The top 51 contracts’ offseason rosters are represented by the lower figure, and the top 53 contracts’ costs are represented by the larger figure.

Taking into account the enlarged 2024 NFL salary ceiling—which contains $13 million more in available money than was projected—the bad news is that Buffalo is still over the cap limit.

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Therefore, general manager Brandon Beane has a lot of work ahead of him to bring One Bills Drive into compliance with the salary cap set by the league, even though the cap ceiling figure for the upcoming season is helpful. This is all before the franchise has even considered adding any of the ten draft picks they could acquire by joining the Buffalo Bills, let alone signing free agents from outside the organization.

Anticipate more such moves with the current Bills squad, as has been the case in previous seasons, utilizing restructures that add void years and spread out the cap burden for multiple players’ contracts.

Although the Bills have not yet released an official statement, our calculations indicate that they are currently between $37.3 million and $40.1 million above the cap (or $33 million if we take into account the NFLPA figure from above). The wage cap for NFL players in 2024 is set at $255.4 million, which is $13 million more than anticipated.