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According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter the Bills are now open to trading Safety Jairus Byrd, the teams Franchise player.
Bills know wisest course of action is to trade franchise S Jairus Byrd and they now are open to dealing him, per sources. Talks ongoing.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) October 6, 2013
Byrd had been seeking a trade since it seemed clear that the Bills were not going to come to an acceptable agreement with Byrd and he was going to be forced to play the year on a one year contract. The Bills likely had more trade leverage before the season began when teams had more salary cap space to work with and would have been able to negotiate a long term contract with Byrd. Byrd is now locked into a one year contract and has yet to play this season because of injury. It was rumored that Byrd was healthy enough to play this past Thursday but was held out of the game. In light of this new information its possible the Bills did not want Byrd to aggravate any injury that could dampen their trade possibilities.
In order to trade for Byrd a team must be able to absorb $4,881,882 in salary unless the Bills would be willing to prepay some of that money to facilitate a trade. Unless a team was willing to part with a high second round pick I would find that hard to imagine. Based on the current cap league cap space report the only teams that could absorb the charges are the Browns, Jaguars, Dolphins, Eagles, Panthers, Packers, Buccaneers, Bengals, Titans, Patriots, Broncos, and Cardinals, some of whom would have no interest for a variety of reasons. For a one year rental I could see the Panthers and Bengals both being interested in the player.
View Jairus Byrds Contract and Salary Cap Page
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Jason is the founder of OTC and has been studying NFL contracts and the salary cap for over 15 years. Jason has co-authored two books about the NFL, Crunching Numbers and the Drafting Stage, which are widely circulated in the industry and hosts the OTC Podcast. Jason’s work has been featured in various publications including the Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, NFL Network and more. OTC is widely considered the leading authority on contract matters in the NFL.