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The Cincinnati Bengals have a reputation as a team unwilling to make big moves in free agency due to money, jeopardizing compensatory picks or some combination of the two.
Does that change this year? It doesn’t sound like a hard no.
After noting it “sounds like the Bengals are going to be more active in free agency than they have in the past,” Geoff Hobson of Bengals.com provided a quote from director of player personnel Duke Tobin that suggests compensatory picks aren’t a driving force of the process:
“It’s not a driving force. It’s something to be aware of when we’re going through the process, but it’s not an overriding factor. We want to build the best team. At times that requires looking at players from other teams and sometimes extending players on your own team. It’s not easily predictable and we haven’t been able to sit down yet with a player or an agent.”
A few things here. 1. This is major grain-of-salt time. 2. Compensatory picks have very clearly been a big part of the process and they’ve admitted such in the past.
Anyway, the Bengals project to have about $47.6 million in cap right now. That’s before signing a rookie class and presumably getting long-term deals for guys like A.J. Green, if not Joe Mixon (those are both apparently in the plans).
But that’s also before the team presumably frees up another $17.7 million in cap via offloading Andy Dalton, as well as another $9.5 million by offloading Cordy Glenn.
The Bengals signed four notable outside free agents last offseason with John Miller, B.W. Webb, Kerry Wynn and John Jerry. None of those were for more than $16.5 million total.
Call it a way to adjust expectations. The Bengals will probably be about that active again while they look to plug holes on a leaky defense. But even this bit of info doesn’t mean the front office will suddenly be in play for free agency’s biggest names.
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