ORCHARD PARK – You know the old saying, when one door closes, another one opens.

Well, the Buffalo Bills should most certainly close the door on further employing edge rusher Von Miller, and they should absolutely look to open the door and allow superstar edge rusher Myles Garrett to burst through it.

Monday, Garrett officially requested a trade from the Cleveland Browns. He released a heartfelt statement focused on his love of the Browns and their fan base, but he concluded it with: “With that in mind, I have requested to be traded from the Cleveland Brown.”

Let the rumor mill start grinding.

Of course, the Browns immediately responded that they have no intention of trading the 29-year-old Garrett who is one of the greatest players in franchise history, and we’re not just talking about the rebooted Browns of 2002, we’re talking all time.

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Myles Garrett stats, accomplishments

In eight seasons, he has amassed 102.5 sacks including double digits in each of the last seven years, and he has earned six All-Pro selections (four on the first team), six Pro Bowl invites and he was the 2023 NFL defensive player of the year.

In terms of a difference maker for a defense, there may not be another player in the league who would rank ahead of Garrett, and every Super Bowl contending team should be interested in pursuing him.

Browns general manager Andrew Berry said at his end of season press conference in early January, “My anticipation, expectation is that he’ll have a direct ticket from Cleveland to Canton at the end of his years and expect him to be here and retire a Brown, quite frankly.” Last week at the Senior Bowl, Berry doubled down and basically reiterated the same stance.

Part of that reasoning is the onerous dead salary cap they would take on. According to sports contract website Spotrac.com, moving Garrett prior to June 1 would result in a $36.2 million hit in 2025, and doing it after June 1 spreads that over two years ($14.8 million in 2025 and $21.5 million in 2026).

However, waiting until after June 1 would mean the massive package in draft assets the Browns would certainly ask for would be for 2026 and not 2025, so that would not be ideal. That makes it a tricky situation for the Browns, so is it really worth trading Garrett?

What could the Buffalo Bills offer in a trade for Myles Garrett?

If Cleveland does pursue a deal, the Bills need to be in the mix, and the loss of perhaps their 2025 and 2026 first-round draft picks, if that’s what it takes, should not impede them. It’s not like the Bills have made great use of their first-round picks the last few years.

As for the money, yeah, that could be a problem. The Bills would have to re-do his current contract, and Spotrac projects an extension could be in the neighborhood of four years and $137 million. Obviously, general manager Brandon Beane would need to do some major surgery on the cap to make it work, but he has been willing to do this in past.

When Beane took the mighty swing and signed Miller to a six-year, $120 million free agent contract in 2022, nothing less than a Super Bowl championship was expected.

At the time, Miller’s arrival was thought to be the missing link to Buffalo’s inability to get past the Kansas City Chiefs who they had just lost to in back-to-back playoff games including the deplorable 13 seconds debacle two months earlier.

Already considered a Hall of Famer Miller was expected to take the middling Buffalo pass rush to new heights, the player who would rise up in the biggest moments when a defensive play needed to be made, something the Bills’ defense had always lacked in January. But then he blew out his knee midway through 2022 and was never the same player.

In retrospect, the Miller move fell far short of delivering on its original intention, and now the Bills need to cut their losses and move on from the now 35-year-old former star. That move would create a $15.4 million dead cap hit, but would open about $8.5 million in space for 2025 which would be helpful in procuring Garrett.

“I don’t have anything I can give you clarity on today about him,” Beane said last week of Miller. “We’ve got a lot of things to look at, but I’m appreciative of Von. I know we didn’t get three or four years of healthy Von, but I do want to say … he brought things, a championship mentality. You always want guys around who know what it looks like, to tell guys what championship teams look like, felt like, and so beyond his production on the field, he does a lot of things in our locker room behind the scenes.”

And all that was fine, but the reality is that Miller was on the downside of his career even before he got hurt. Garrett is still in his prime and adding him to the defense would finally give the Bills the player they have lacked, really, since Bruce Smith left town after the 1999 season: A game-wrecking pass rusher, a player the other team has to game plan specifically for, and even then, the plan doesn’t work.

“We always want to be strong up front,” Beane said when asked about the sub-standard Bills pass rush in the AFC Championship Game loss to the Chiefs. “We’ll look at that and if there’s areas that we can get better there, we will try to address that.”

Sal Maiorana has covered the Buffalo Bills for four decades including 35 years as the full-time beat writer for the D&C, and he has written numerous books about the history of the team. He can be reached at [email protected], and you can follow him on X @salmaiorana and on Bluesky @salmaiorana.bsky.social. Sign up for his Bills Blast newsletter here: https://profile.democratandchronicle.com/newsletters/bills-blast