Eric Wood has a neck injury that’s serious enough to keep him from being medically cleared to continue playing football, but the center will remains on the Bills roster a while longer.
Wood announced the medical news on Friday along with word of a press conference to talk about it on Monday. The press conference, which was attended by several current and former Bills, started after a 50-minute delay and ended a couple of minutes later with Wood making an opening statement without taking any questions from the assembled media.
Wood said, via the Buffalo News, that “even with further rehab and treatment a return is not possible,” but did not officially announce his retirement and said he “looks forward to helping the team in some capacity” as he remains on the roster.
Salary cap issues, including a jump in his cap hit if he’s placed on the reserve/retired list before June 1, are the reason for the procedural holdup.
“We don’t have any cap room right now,” General Manager Brandon Beane said, via Mike Rodak of ESPN.com. “You roll it over [into the next season]. He’ll be on our roster for a while, until we figure things out. We’ll get it worked out. He’ll do stuff on his end, and we’ll do it with the help of the league office and management council. We’ll figure it out from there.”
Wood said he will answer questions at some point in the future and that point will presumably come once these issues have been ironed out.