Bengals Free Agency

[SunsetBengal]

(03-15-2024, 06:14 PM)CottonHill Wrote: I’ve been extremely negative but I feel it’s for good reason.
The Bengals are one of a few teams who don’t actively restructure to make room for more talent. You can’t win in today’s age like that.
We had among the most cap space available and I would say we have gotten slightly worse while the rest of the division for sure, and league in general got better.
The resigning of Sample, Hudson, Williams, and Irwin don’t make us any better. Those guys are depth and special teams guys. The tight ends are 1 dimensional and not particularly good at their strong suit.
I love the signing of Rankins in a vacuum but on the whole, the interior d line is worse which is a biiiig issue.
The secondary signings of Stone and Bell look great but they show bigger underlying issues. They are replacing high draft picks and obviously stopping us from improving in other areas. Furthermore, the Stone signing has a chance to be as bad as the Scott signing. All the indicators are there of a guy playing over his head in a contract year on a loaded defense.
The o line thing appears to be malpractice at this point. If we are having to wine and dine Mekhi Becto , what are we even doing. He is a big massive pile of crap. The right side of our line will be slip if that’s what we go into the year with.
I’m fine with the Mixon to Moss move although it’s lateral at best. The issue was our FO looked to be incompetent in the whole Mixon saga. Release them get saved by a trade. Weren’t doing their due diligence
So with all that cap space we improved our interior pass rush….at the expense of the run defense and improved the secondary, with below average athletes at the expense of our whole roster.
There seems to be zero cohesion or urgency in the FO and gives me zero confidence moving forward. We could’ve easily improved at RT, RG, TE, and have not done so.

(03-15-2024, 06:26 PM)Bengalstripes9 Wrote: Seems like the Packers made some good moves.

They upgraded their safety.

Josh Jacobs is certainly a good back.
I'm a bit leary of signing backs to big contracts though.

What concerns me about the Packers is their oline.
But they weren't terrible last year, so maybe they're alright.
Sucks to lose Batieri. He was a beast before injury.

They definitely need some younger players to step up and contribute more to their pass rush and front 7.

...

As far as the Bengals..

They improved their secondary.
Still need a corner or two though.

If they add Tart and a good DT in the draft I think they will have a better rotation this year.
But losing Reader is a big loss.

At RT you go from having a league average right tackle to a giant question mark.
Hopefully they can draft a good lineman in the draft.
They need to start hitting on lineman draft picks because they're counting on a lot of free agent vets they can't keep around too much longer.

Overall I would say the team will end up being about the same this year and needs to stay healthy.
They really need to hit the draft out of the park to set up future success, and a deep run this year.

Wow, up there we have completely dissimilar ways of saying pretty much the same thing.  Oddly enough, I pretty much agree with both.