02-08-2022, 10:30 AM
(02-07-2022, 05:51 PM)ochocincos Wrote: That's $43-45 mill just out of those 4.
Bengals only have 34 players under contract for 2022 if Reiff voids his contract (assuming yes if you're replacing him with Brown) and Waynes is cut (assuming yes if you're getting around $70 mill in cap).
You're now at 38 with the 4 guys you said to add, and you need to get to 51 (including draft).
Vet minimum is just under $1 mill.
You need to replace/re-sign the following players (starters in bold):
- Eli Apple (CB2)
- Ricardo Allen (SS2)
- Darius Phillips (CB5)
- Trae Waynes (CB4)
- Tre Flowers/Vernon Hargreaves (CB6)
- Jordan Evans (LB5)
- Larry Ogunjobi (UT1)
- BJ Hill (UT2)
- CJ Uzomah (TE1)
- Auden Tate (WR4)
- Mike Thomas (WR5)
- Trent Taylor (WR6 + PR)
- Brandon Allen (QB2)
- Mitchell Wilcox (TE3)
Draft should cover about 5 of those, possibly up to 7.
But the others you'll have to figure out how to fill with only ~$20 mill in cap.
It's very possible that Apple, Uzomah, and one of the DTs costs almost $20 mill alone.
And that doesn't even start to address that there are a few positions that the depth is bad, which means more players could/should get replaced.
Reiff 2nd yr was voided the day he signed. They structured contract to have dead money in yr 2 and is only a 1 yr year contract with 2nd yr voided. He is UFA when FA starts.
Those numbers listed above was a generic illustration of what i thought those players AAV would be. That doesnt mean thats what their cap number would be, that was just a generic illustration to show that we would still have a bunch of cap room with 4 "high dollar" signings. We can also pick up another 6 million cutting hopkins if we sign a guy like bozeman. The cap is so easily manipulated we could technically sign the 4 i listed plus all of our FA / draft picks and still be 15-20 mil under cap. I think most fans really dont understand the cap and then they get complete nonsense articles from Hobson who has no idea how cap works and they believe its impossible to sign guys to deals. Look around the league. We have seen teams almost 100 million over cap and not cut any real quality players and magically be under cap. We have seen teams with 2 million in cap space sign players to mega deals. The brown family doesnt usually operate that way so i went for a more realistic approach where those 4 i listed would be easily signable with no real cap manipulation. I believe we will sign Uzomah as well. Well have to decide between Ogunjobi or Hill. I dont think anybody really sees Apple as the long term starter, so if a team is willing to give him starter money look for him to be replaced with pick #32!!!!. If we dont fix oline in FA the priority in draft has to be Oline. I prefer to fix oline with young veterans because oline is hardest position to transition from college to pros, fixing oline with veterans would be my approach. In my opinion, the oline we sign is much more important to the future success of the team than say somebody like eli apple or ogunjobi.
