Peter King:
I think this hole the Bills have dug for themselves just seems to get deeper every day. The team last played a playoff game eight days into this century. Seventeen years into this century, the drought is far from over. The Bills, who sent Marcell Dareus home before the preseason game at Baltimore over a disciplinary issue, now need to have a serious discussion about his future in Buffalo. “Obviously, a guy with his contract status, you would hope that he would be a better leader than that,” GM Brandon Beane said. Since being drafted in 2011, Dareus has been arrested twice, suspended by the league for substance issues, and now gets sent home for team disciplinary reasons. Since signing a six-year, $96 million extension in 2015, Dareus has had a four-game suspension and now this, and the Bills have to choose between paying Dareus $9.75 million in salary this year … or face the onerous task, if they choose to cut him, of splitting a $38.35 million hit for dead money over 2017 and ’18.
It’s all onerous, frankly. The contract was an idiotic one to agree to in the first place, based on Dareus’s off-field history. And now the franchise has another anchor on it. Say you were 10 years old and just getting into pro football when the Bills last made the playoffs. Now you’ve gone through middle school, high school and maybe four years of college, and gotten married, and maybe just started a family. And your team’s been miserable every season. How much more are you ready to take? Not sure of that … but it ain’t over.