Reevaluating the WR market as the regular season comes to a close

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(01-04-2023, 11:26 PM)puddycat Wrote: The Bengals don't trade or cut players.  If Higgins would rather play out his contract in Cin (and not hold out), he can do that.  Boyd is also earning his money.  The problem of too many good players is a nice problem to have.  My guess is that we try to keep all our starters on defense first.  It's cheaper and yields a better result.
However, if any player holds out, refusing to honor their current contract..  we saw that movie with Jessie Bates.  I wish this team was more aggressive about trading players for high draft picks when they can and the player wants out.

The Bengals couldn't have traded Bates even if they wanted to because he wasn't under contract while the franchise tag was unsigned and Bates eventually has to cave and sign because he wasn't going to miss out on making $13m. (And they probably regret that now, as Bates once again has been meh.) But by the time he signed the FA rush and the Draft had already happened, so you're not going to really be able to move a $13m cap hit, and also then you'd be getting a 2023 draft pick rather than a 2022 draft pick.

We haven't seen that move from a 23-year-old #1 WR who seems to still be improving and only has $1.8m coming towards him in 2023. If he tries to take it to extension-or-trade this coming offseason, it isn't the same situation as with Bates at all.