The Buffalo Bills are restructuring Josh Allen's contract, again.
It's something Bills Mafia has gotten used to every offseason. The Bills find a way to move money around in Allen's huge deal to make room for other moves.
This time around, it's $12 million in savings by a restructure, [according to ESPN's Field Yates](https://Why Bills' $12 million contract restructure for Josh Allen was so much less than Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson).
Essentially, the Bills were able to do this by converting about $15 million of Allen's salary into a signing bonus, and by the NFL's cap rules, most of that was then savings against the salary cap.
It's a lot less than Lamar Jackson and Patrick Mahomes saved their teams in salary cap space this offseason with restructures, with both their numbers coming in at or above $40 million.
There's a reason for that, though.
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Why was Bills' Josh Allen contract restructure only $12 million?
In essence, the Bills actually couldn't save any more than this on an Allen restructure this season based on how his contract was set up.
"Josh Allen's 2026 compensation only allows for $15.7M of salary to be converted to bonus, which would free up a maximum of $12.5M of cap space for the Bills," Bills analyst Fred Kilmartin wrote on X.
So in actuality, $16.5M minus the 2026 veteran minimum, if they did the full amount of restructuring (which seems likely) would yield $12.16M in savings for 2026.
— Joe Buscaglia (@JoeBuscaglia) March 11, 2026
His six-year, $330 million contract was set up with option bonuses and void years from the start that allowed money to be spread out longer term.
What that means, though, is that his given base salary in a particular season isn't as high as you'd expect -- most of the money is already allotted through various bonuses. The only thing the Bills could move around to impact that cap is the base salary, and they moved nearly all of it into bonuses with this latest move.
Relative to those other contracts, though, Allen had less of that salary there to be moved in the first place, because his deal was structured differently, and thus the lower total than Mahomes and Jackson.
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