Four consecutive years

[THE PISTONS]

(10-16-2017, 03:05 PM)ochocincos Wrote: A glaring issue - The Bengals are 30th in cap spent on offensive line. Their highest paid player (Boling) doesn't even account for $5 mill against the cap, ranking the 74th highest paid player on the OL across the NFL based on average salary. Most teams have 2-3 players on OL being paid higher than him.
Yet the Bengals have 42% of their cap spent on the offensive side as whole.
How, you may ask?
Primarily tied up in WR, in which the Bengals are 6th highest in the league at $24.31 mill. $21.6 mill of that is being occupied by three WRs: AJ Green ($13.5 mill - justified), LaFell ($5 mill - garbage this year), and John Ross ($3.1 mill - unable to play due to injuries). The glaring one out of this is LaFell, who I'd much rather see cut in the offseason and that saved cap go toward OL.

The Bengals also have a lot of money tied up into defense (48.59% - 6th highest).
They are paying a lot of heavy hitters to account for this: Atkins ($10.6 mil - justified), Kirkpatrick ($9.38 mill - meh not worth that much, but not a terrible deal), Burfict ($8.3 mill - justified?), Adam Jones ($7.39 mill - justified?), Dunlap ($7.25 mill - justified), Iloka ($5.4 mill - fair), Michael Johnson ($5.12 mill - not worth the role he's in now), Minter ($4.25 mill - not worth the role he's playing), Williams ($4 mill - fair?).

Cut bait with those being (vastly) overpaid and/or underperforming, invest that into OL and maybe a WR that can actually contribute well, and we should see the offense improve. The defense may take a hit, but I'd gladly take that to be solid and balanced on offense.

There has been a lot of rumbling that what the new CBA does is make teams spend a lot of their cap on the highest paid players, then rely on guys on rookie deals because they are cheap. The speculation is that the mid-tier players have been squeezed out.

Why sign a Center for $3-4 million a year when you can rely on a rookie making $600k? There is a dropoff in play, but a cost savings.

This is happening around the league and play is definitely worse overall this year.

While we do look mediocre, a lot of teams do. There is no dominant team.