Bargain Bin Beane: Bills ink three veteran players to one-year deals

It was no secret.

The Buffalo Bills and President of Football Operations/General Manager Brandon Beane went into the start of the offseason with certain restraints they had to work around due to the glaring fact that the team opened the new league year with an extremely limited amount of cap space.

There was a lot of “dead money” still to be paid for players of seasons past, and there was always only going to be a certain amount of limited levers that Big Baller Beane could pull this spring in order to provide the flexibility needed to make the moves he and the front office felt necessary to construct the 2026 iteration of the Bills and fit all the pieces together to complete the vision new head coach Joe Brady has for his squad.

So, when the team recently refused to match the offer sheet that the Minnesota Vikings signed reserve offensive tackle Ryan Van Demark to just last week, there was some cap relief provided for Buffalo — $3.52 million to be exact.

It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough for Beane to throw on his shades and slip into his alter ego on Thursday, transforming into Bargain Bin Beane just days after receiving his refund check as the Bills made a random news dump in the early hours of the evening, announcing the team had struck one-year deals with wide receiver Trent Sherfield Sr., center Lloyd Cushenberry III, and guard/center Austin Corbett.

Exact terms, outside of the length of the deals, were not immediately disclosed.

Corbett, a 30-year-old veteran who has 78 career starts across eight seasons split between the Cleveland Browns, Los Angeles Rams, and most recently the Carolina Panthers, visited the Bills on Monday.

You can read all about Carolina’s 2025 Walter Payton Man of the Year nominee’s football journey right here. 

The former Super Bowl LVI champion figures to be the primary competition for fellow interior offensive lineman Alec Anderson in training camp this summer as the two will likely battle it out at St. John Fisher University for the right to fill the vacancy left behind by David Edwards at left guard this offseason.

Ironically, Corbett and Edwards were teammates together during their stellar run toward Super Bowl glory with the Rams back in the 2021 season, and Buffalo’s newest offensive lineman likely hopes to follow in a similar path to the one Edwards just took en route to cashing in on a four-year, $61 million contract with the New Orleans Saints at the beginning of March after spending the previous three seasons in Western New York.

At the very least, the 33rd-overall pick in the 2018 draft will undoubtedly provide quality depth along the interior of the offensive line as he has experience at both guard and center in the NFL, and he also played left tackle during his four years at the University of Nevada.

The former collegiate walk-on will turn 31 in September.

As for the Bills’ other two signings — wide receiver Trent Sherfield Sr. and center Lloyd Cushenberry III — at least one of the two players should be familiar to members of Bills Mafia as Sherfield Sr., an eight-year veteran, played for the Bills as recently as the 2023 season — his only year with the team . . . until now, of course.

The former 2017 UDFA out of Vanderbilt University has been a bit of a journeyman since entering the league, but he’s made a career out of it.

In his eight seasons, the 6-foot-1, 205-pound wideout has tallied 89 receptions for 1,034 yards and six touchdowns while spending time with the Arizona Cardinals, San Francisco 49ers, Miami Dolphins, Minnesota Vikings, Denver Broncos, New England Patriots, and Bills, and the savvy veteran can certainly provide Buffalo’s receiver room with a plethora of knowledge from his time across the league during his second go-around with the squad.

In 2025, Sherfield Sr. shared his time between the Cardinals and Broncos in the regular season before finishing the year off on the Patriots’ practice squad.

For the season, the Danville, Illinois, native registered three receptions on five targets for 21 yards, with each catch coming during his 10-game stint in Denver.

With that in mind, he’ll likely only be competing for a depth position in the wide receiver group in 2026 while providing plenty of quality snaps on special teams, which is a role sorely needed with fellow wideout Tyrell Shavers’ recovery outlook from ACL surgery in January unclear at this point in time.

The former Vanderbilt Commodore will turn 31 in February — 11 days after Super Bowl LXI is set to take place at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, California.

What a birthday present that would be.

Finally, as for Lloyd Cushenberry III, the veteran offensive lineman might not be all too familiar to the likes of the Buffalo Fambase, but the former 2020 third-round pick of the Denver Broncos and recent pivot man of the Tennessee Titans is very familiar with the Bills’ newest head coach, Joe Brady, who was the passing game coordinator during the pair’s time together at LSU in 2019, a season in which the Tigers ultimately won the national championship.

Cushenberry III, now a six-year veteran in the NFL, was a relatively highly-touted prospect amongst league circles coming out of college as a First-Team All-SEC award recipient, and, considering he has 80 career starts under his belt throughout his time with the Broncos and Titans, the Carville, Louisiana, native is still fairly young at just 28 years old.

However, after a 2023 performance in Denver where he had the best season of his professional career according to Pro Football Focus’ overall grading system (73.2), the 6-foot-4, 315-pound interior lineman sustained a season-ending achilles injury a mere nine weeks into the 2024 campaign after having just inked a four-year, $50 million contract with Tennessee earlier that offseason.

And, while the former LSU Tiger returned to the lineup in time to start 15 of 17 games in Nashville last season, it was admittedly a down year for Cushenberry III, and the team eventually decided to release the veteran center last month on February 25 amidst a slew of other organizational changes.

So, now he’ll look to presumably have a rebound renaissance of sorts with the Bills in 2026, despite that likely coming from a backup position behind starting center Connor McGovern, who re-signed with Buffalo on a four-year, $52 million deal of his own earlier this month.

With that said, teams can never have enough depth on the offensive line, and Cushenberry III, along with fellow free-agent signee Austin Corbett, certainly provides that.

Stay tuned for all of the latest happenings at One Bills Drive for the rest of the offseason right here at the Buffalo Fambase blog.