More from Fairburn:
So why release him now? Well, there was little interest in Benjamin at the trading deadline because of his pedestrian statistics and $8.5 million cap hit. Some wonder if the Bills should have held on to Benjamin for the purpose of the compensatory pick formula, but that wasn’t a factor. For one, the Bills have $90 million in cap space and few free agents of their own in 2019, meaning they will out-gain their losses and not be players in the compensatory pick formula. Even if they were worried about that, the only way they would get a significant pick for Benjamin is if he signed a hefty contract elsewhere. Given the lack of interest in him at the deadline, a big payday doesn’t appear to be in Benjamin’s future.
The Bills elected to release Benjamin now because he wasn’t in their long-term plans. The playoffs are out of the question, so the team plans to feature their younger receivers the rest of the way. Rather than continue to cut Benjamin’s snap counts or make him inactive, the Bills elected to spare him the embarrassment and attention that would come with that and give him a chance to sign with another team. The same goes for wide receiver Andre Holmes, whom the Bills also released Tuesday.