It’s been a week since the Buffalo Bills were bounced from the playoffs for the fourth time in five seasons by the Kansas City Chiefs.
What went wrong in another heartbreaking three-point loss? The easiest place to start is on the defensive side of the ball for the Bills.
Bills coach Sean McDermott admitted last week that his defense didn’t win the battle at the line of scrimmage nearly enough in 2024. He said that for the Bills to move forward and reach a Super Bowl, it will require more up front.
“You do need difference makers,” McDermott said. “You need two or three on each side of the ball that are difference makers. … That gets a team to the Super Bowl. Philosophically, for me, when you look at it and you study it, you’ve got (to have) two to three on each side of the ball that are top 1-3, 1-5 at their position. And that’s real.”
So, how do the Bills get a top 5 pass rusher before the start of next season?
Bills general manager Brandon Beane said last week that teams aren’t generally eager to part with such “game wreckers.”
“We’ll turn over every stone we can to find them,” Beane said. “but would I love to add one of those guys? Heck yeah, I would. But we have a cap. We pick where we pick. You gotta make the best of what you got, and again, we would love to do that if that player’s out there.”
One of those players is officially looking for a new home.
Cleveland Browns edge rusher Myles Garrett publically made a trade request on Monday, releasing a statement that conveyed that his ultimate goal is to compete for a Super Bowl.
“The goal was never to go from Cleveland to Canton, it has always been to compete for and win a Super Bowl,” Garrett wrote. “With that in mind, I have requested to be traded from the Cleveland Browns.”
The Chiefs hadn’t scored 30 points in a game all season before last week’s AFC Championship. Buffalo even held Kansas City to 20 points back in November, but when it mattered most, the Bills couldn’t stop Patrick Mahomes. They failed to record a single sack in the AFC title game, making it just three total sacks in the four playoff games.
In three career games against Mahomes, Garrett alone has two sacks. In this season’s Week 15 game against the Chiefs, Garrett had 12 pressures, according to Pro Football Focus. The Bills had 14 total pressures as a team in the AFC Championship.
Buffalo’s lack of production up front against Kansas City has been a problem that general manager Brandon Beane has been unable to fix over the last four offseasons.
Beane has tried drafting pass rushers. He spent a first-round pick on Greg Rousseau and a second-round pick on Boogie Basham in 2021. When that wasn’t enough to push the Bills over the proverbial hump, Beane inked future Hall of Fame pass rusher Von Miller to a six-year, $120 million free agent contract in 2023.
Miller showed flashes of his old self this season, but Buffalo can add roughly $17 million in cap space with a post-June 1 release of Miller, who turns 36 in March. The Bills have plenty of talent on their defensive line. Rousseau was a top performer last season, finishing tied for 7th in the NFL with 70 pressures on the season. Adding a player like Garrett could help Rousseau and defensive tackle Ed Oliver take their games to the next level.
The Browns are on the record saying they’re not trading Garrett. But the 29-year sack artist has no interest in remaining in Cleveland, and one particular “jaw-dropping” line in his trade request raised eyebrows in Browns country today.
A trade for Garrett or any high-profile pass rusher like Las Vegas Raiders edge Maxx Crosby will be costly for Beane and the Bills. A move like this will require plenty of draft compensation and perhaps even a young player with a bright future. The going rate for a difference-maker on the defensive line is at least a pair of first-round picks. Beane should be willing to pay that price because Buffalo generally picks late in the round because of their recent success, and the return on early picks in the last three seasons has been a disappointment.
The Browns will be forced to eat roughly $36 million in dead money to move Garrett. But that shouldn’t be a hold-up for a team dealing with the franchise-strangling Deshaun Watson contract. The Bills will have work to do to open up cap space. Beane said he doesn’t expect Buffalo to be big spenders, but players of Garrett’s caliber aren’t available every offseason. He should rely on his ability to find quality starters in the middle rounds and sacrifice some early picks to get Garrett.
Plenty of graphics show Mahomes’ dominance over the Bills in the playoffs, specifically Buffalo quarterback Josh Allen. A closer look reveals that Allen hasn’t been the problem in his team’s losses. The lack of firepower for Buffalo on the defensive side of the ball has been its undoing against the Chiefs in the playoffs.
Trading for Garrett might finally give the Bills the defensive playmaker they need to beat Mahomes and the Chiefs in January.
