The Los Angeles Rams front office may have unknowingly helped out the Buffalo Bills on Tuesday.
The Rams signed star running back Kyren Williams to a three-year, $33 million extension, which includes $23 million guaranteed and keeps the 24-year-old tailback in L.A. until 2028.
And while keeping Williams around for the foreseeable future is good news for the Rams, it’s also great news for the Bills, who have a young star running back of their own that needs a new contract and is holding in until he gets it.
James Cook, who’s fresh off his second straight 1,000-yard season and who had a career-high 16 rushing touchdowns in 2024, began his hold-in this week. Monday was the second day of practice he missed — a move that seemingly caught Bills general manager Brandon Beane off guard.
“Yeah, you know, it’s not something we were fully aware of until shortly before practice,” Beane said, via Katherine Fitzgerald of the Buffalo News. “So, I get it, I understand it; it’s the world we’re in, I guess, of how players want to respond and things like that.”
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It doesn’t appear the Bills and Cook have made any real progress as of late toward hammering out a new deal.
But with Williams signing an extension that makes him the seventh-highest paid RB in the NFL on a per-year basis behind Philadelphia’s Saquon Barkley ($20.6M), San Francisco’s Christian McCaffrey ($19M), Baltimore’s Derrick Henry ($15M), Indianapolis’ Jonathan Taylor ($14M), New Orleans’ Alvin Kamara ($12.25M), Green Bay’s Josh Jacobs ($12M), things may look a little more hopeful for Buffalo, which now has a solid blueprint for what Cook’s new deal might look like.
“Some around the league believed this was the deal, between Kyren Williams and the Rams, that had to get done before James Cook and the Bills escalated their contract talks,” ESPN’s Adam Schefter wrote on X.
After participating in three days of mandatory minicamp and all eight of the Bills’ previous training camp practices, Cook told reporters earlier this week that he won’t be practicing with the team because of “business.”
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But with one big running back domino already falling, and with Beane’s latest comments on WGR550, one would expect some serious progress to be made between the Bills and Cook.
“At the end of the day, I wish we weren’t here,” Beane said. “This is my ninth season here. We’ve never had a player miss due to a contract or anything like that, so that’s disappointing for me.
“It’s not something we want, not something we’re looking forward to, but at the end of the day, like I said earlier, it’s kind of, sometimes can be the way of the world and so we’ll deal with it the best we can.”
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