For the Buffalo Bills, it was meant to be different this time. Once again, the team found itself facing the Kansas City Chiefs in the playoffs — at home for once, with Patrick Mahomes playing the first true road game of his NFL playoff career.

The outcome was the same as in two of the past three seasons — a Chiefs win — and now the Bills are facing an offseason with difficult questions to answer after attacking this season hard to get over the hump.

One of the biggest cheat codes in the NFL is to have an elite quarterback on a cheap contract, and this was the last season Buffalo had to enjoy that reality. Though the Bills signed quarterback Josh Allen to a $258 million contract extension in 2021, next year is the first season the salary cap ramifications of that deal kick in.

Allen’s cap hit was just $18.6 million in 2023, the 11th-highest figure among quarterbacks and around half that of Mahomes.

Next year, it jumps to over $47 million, which is $10 million more than Mahomes’ league-leading number from this season.

Buffalo is also currently $43 million-plus over the salary cap, and while that’s never a particularly sensible snapshot to take (10 teams are projected to be over the cap right now — it’s like looking at a credit card bill only just before the payment date), it does start to paint a picture of the tough financial decisions that loom.

Click here to see the Bills' key pending free agents

The situation isn’t quite as dire as it looks, though. The Bills have a lot of money they can create by turning 2024 base salaries into signing bonuses, effectively kicking the financial can down the road by spreading it out over the remainder of the contract. But this doesn’t make the financial pressure disappear; it simply makes it manageable.

The Bills may go from trying to find a third complementary receiver to Stefon Diggs and Gabriel Davis to hoping they can manage without Davis at all if they can’t compete to retain his services in free agency.