Is this the end of the Buffalo Bills’ championship window?

Let’s begin with the obvious: The Buffalo Bills were devastated by injuries this season. Losing their two best defensive players — linebacker Matt Milano and cornerback Tre’Davious White — to season-ending maladies was a major hit, and if either or both of those players were on the field in the divisional round, the result might have been different than the 27-24 Kansas City Chiefs win.

The Chiefs have been the Bills’ white whale over the last half-decade in the postseason, but there’s now a darker question for Buffalo’s NFL franchise.

Is this the end of the championship window that began five years ago? The Bills had made the playoffs once from 2000 through 2017, but they’ve never missed a postseason since Josh Allen became their quarterback in 2018. The litany of losses takes the bloom off the rose, of course, and if this is a narrowing of those possibilities without even a Super Bowl appearance to show for it, that’s in its own way more frustrating than the Bills teams that lost four straight Super Bowls from the 1990 through 1993 seasons.

On the surface, the Bills would seem to have a reasonably bright contending future… and then you look at the impending free agents, and Buffalo’s 2024 salary cap situation.

Most of the players in question are replaceable over time with smart free-agency and draft decisions, but as Jason Fitzgerald of OverTheCap.com points out, there isn’t any room to operate in an aggressive fashion. The Bills have the NFL’s fourth-worst cap deficit in preparation for the new league year, and the contracts that are most onerous based on cost versus performance aren’t really moveable.

Receiver Stefon Diggs carries a $27,854 million cap charge in 2024, and the dead money incurred with his pre-June 1 release would be $31,096 million. Maybe there’s a trade or a later cut, but the capital they might get from a declining receiver is minimal, and a later cut just moves the money down the road.

Edge-rusher Von Miller has a $23,799 million cap charge for 2024, and a $32,501 million dead cap hit were he released. The structure of Miller’s contract is even more unfavorable pursuant to a post-June 1 release.

Those are the two biggest albatrosses other than Josh Allen’s $47,056,281 cap hit for 2024, and Josh Allen is actually worth that.

So, the Bills are facing decisions with other players whose released might be more manageable. That includes White (whose recent injury history may accelerate that decision), offensive tackle Dion Dawkins, center Mitch Morse, cornerback Rasul Douglas, and safety Jordan Poyer. Problem is, there isn’t one player on the roster whose release would provide massive cap relief — the Bills will have to gut this thing to a point. That’s what happens when you go all in on a championship as general manager Brandon Beane has done, and you can’t blame Beane for trying, but things are where they are.

Yes, the Bills have dynamic young players you can build a rebuild around. But at this point, when you look at the upcoming free-agency carnage and the ways in which the team’s player contracts are currently structured, it’s tough to imagine any scenario in which the Bills won’t have to take at least two steps back before taking any more steps forward.

And with no Super Bowl appearances to show for it, that’s an extremely tough reality.