The Bills signed wide receiver Percy Harvin to a three-year contract last offseason, although there never was much chance that he’d see the final two years of the deal.
With base salaries of $9 million for 2016 and 2017, those years were tacked on to make his 2015 cap hit easier to swallow as the Bills had the ability to void the deal after paying $3 million in salary and a $3 million signing bonus in the first year. As Sal Capaccio of WGR 550 points out, those years void on Friday at 4 p.m. and Harvin will become a free agent again on March 9.
Harvin only played five games for the Bills in 2015 because of knee and hip injuries that cast some doubt about whether he’d be back on the field for anyone in 2016 or any other year. Bills director of player personnel Jim Monos said last month that the team is “still not sure” what’s going on with the wideout, although General Manager Doug Whaley later expressed hope of bringing the veteran back for another season.
“We’ll talk to him, see where he is and hopefully he comes back,” Whaley said, via the Buffalo News. “We want him back.”
It’s hard to imagine Harvin generating too hot a market given his injury history which could help the Bills hold onto him at a low price. Banking on anything substantial from a player who has played 28 games for three different teams over the last four years doesn’t sound like all that sound an idea, however.