Phillips earned a big raise this offseason
The Buffalo Bills came into 2021 with questions at defensive tackle. Those questions were answered in a big way by a player on one leg in a contract year. Harrison Phillips stepped in and passed Star Lotulelei on the depth chart and earned a big free-agent contract with his play while coming in at number seven on our countdown.
In order to afford big contracts for their talented players, the Bills must also find some diamonds in the rough. Cheap veterans and rookies on their entry contracts have to play a major role on the Buffalo Bills and general manager Brandon Beane has found several.
In the past when we’ve done our listing, we used cap hit to reflect value, but with the cap shenanigans employed by Brandon Beane recently and the improvement of the databases, we’ve switched to yearly cash payments as our metric.
Phillips made $950,000 in cash last season. The list of players ahead of him in salary is extensive, and he came in 37th on the roster. He was 90th in the NFL among defensive tackles and the fourth-highest on the Bills.
He played the second-most snaps among defensive tackles, though, logging 44% of the team’s defensive snaps. If you take out the beginning of the year when he was recovering from a partially torn knee tendon, the number is even more skewed; he played more than 54% of the snaps in every game from mid-November to the end of the season. He added 18% of the season’s special teams snaps, too.
He finished with one pass knocked down, a fumble recovery, a sack, and 51 tackles (leading all the Bills’ defensive linemen).
Phillips got a $7 million signing bonus from the Minnesota Vikings this offseason, which doubles the amount he made in four seasons with the Bills.
Buffalo Bills 2021 Best Values
- Stay tuned
- Stay tuned
- Stay tuned
- Stay tuned
- Stay tuned
- Stay tuned
- DT Harrison Phillips
- S Jordan Poyer
- OT Spencer Brown
- RB Devin Singletary
Leave a Reply