ORLANDO — When the NFL released the 2024 compensatory picks earlier this month, Buffalo Bills fans were shocked to see that their team received a fourth-round pick instead of a third.
Bills general manager Brandon Beane spoke with reporters from the JW Marriott in Orlando on Sunday evening – the site of this year’s NFL annual meeting. He said his team received a “raw deal” by only getting a fourth-round comp pick.
Compensatory picks are determined every offseason based on how many players a team lost versus how many they added in the previous offseason’s free agency period. The money that teams pay new free agents is then counted against the money free agents who signed with other teams received. If a team loses more than it paid, it gets as high as a third-round compensatory pick in return.
The Bills lost superstar middle linebacker Tremaine Edmunds in free agency last season after he signed a new four-year contract with the Chicago Bears worth nearly $20 million per season. The biggest ticket item for Buffalo last offseason was pass rusher Leonard Floyd, who signed a one-year deal worth less than $10 million. But that deal didn’t even factor into the comp formula because the Bills signed Floyd in June – past the deadline.
Beane operated all last season on the assumption that the Bills would get a third-round compensatory pick because of how free agency unfolded in 2023.
“It was a major blow because we had planned for it,” he said.
