Are we being realistic with Free Agency expectations?

[*ochocincos*]

(02-20-2022, 01:13 PM)Bengalbug Wrote: Bro, please…we were 5-2.  Burrow was sacked 22 times at that point, on pace for 63 in the regular season (more than we ended up giving).  6 qbs got sacked 30 times or less over 15-17 games.  

The bengals at 5-2 (one loss being an OT loss to packers) had real playoff aspirations.  Are you telling me they couldn’t have done “something” to help get burrow protection?

Instead we sat on our hands, lost our RT and our OL before and after that loss hindered us throughout the rest of the season.  

We won in spite of a huge problem

The past is the past, but there was AMPLE opportunity.

They probably could have, but at what cost?
doing a midseason trade at the deadline would have likely cost a high draft pick for a player who was probably in the final year of their contract anyway.

Also, Bengals were 5-3 at the deadline, not 5-2. And the first half of the schedule was considered the "easy" part.
By mid-Dec, they were 7-6 and about to play DEN, BAL, KC, and CLE.
Most people thought they were only going to win 1 or maybe 2 of those games. Or at least I did.
Once the Bengals made the playoffs, I thought they were going to beat the Raiders, but that's probably as far as they were going to go.

Regardless, it's clear the Bengals thought they had a good enough OL when they signed Riley Reiff to play RT and drafted Carman.
It was likely envisioned XSF/Carman would hold down the RG spot and the OL would be better than it ended up being.
Bengals now (hopefully) saw the error of their ways and will invest more heavily (quality, not quantity) on the OL this offseason.