Tee makes PFF All-Rookie Team

[CJD]

(01-04-2021, 01:09 PM)ochocincos Wrote: I wouldn't worry too much about Chase (or any other receiver) infringing on Higgins and Boyd.
All of Higgins, Boyd, and Green got 100+ targets, so there will be plenty to give to a new pass catcher.
Personally, I don't think Burrow's best fit is a speed guy. I think it's a guy he can trust to catch the ball, especially in the red zone. To me, that's Chase, Smith, or Pitts. Waddle would be nice with a QB who had a big arm and can hit him in stride deep (Mahomes, Allen), but I don't see that being Burrow.
Honestly, Pitts is the smarter option, as it gives them a dynamic pass-catching TE and would allow the Bengals to keep using Sample for what he does best - block.

My bigger concern is finances, honestly. Having three big contracts at WR will inevitably hinder other endeavors. So odds are, one of them will be let go after their contract expires. Boyd will only be 28 at the end of his contract so it won't be like he's an aging veteran who would take a smaller contract or anything like that. And Higgins, if he continues to progress on top of his rookie year (and with a full season of Burrow throwing him the ball) will surely demand quite the large salary increase in the same season that Boyd's contract expires, at the end of 2023. 

So drafting Chase or Smith would kind of...force us to part ways with one of the two at the end of 2023. Unless, of course, Chase is a bust and we don't have to worry about locking him up after 2025 (or 2024 if you don't count his 5th year option). That isn't exactly the mindset you want to have when drafting a WR in the top 5 though haha.

For that reason, I do like the idea of Pitts. It's a minor difference since he's still mostly a "receiver", but him being a TE means you can re-sign him or even franchise him at the TE price tag rather than the WR price tag (a little over 7 million dollars less for a TE Franchise tag compared to a WR franchise tag). And having two high priced WRs and 1 high priced TE just sounds less wasteful than having three high priced WRs, as meaningless as that may be.

My only concern there is that we historically don't use our TEs all that much. Maybe that's because we've never had the elite TE, other than Eifert for one season, so there's a chance that if we did we'd use him more like we did with Eifert in 2015. 

In 2017, we had the opportunity to draft a player who was considered an elite receiving TE in OJ Howard (his success in the NFL  to this point notwithstanding) and we chose John Ross, so maybe we're just not interested in drafting TEs in the top 10. Granted, it was a different coaching staff back then so maybe our ideology would change. We'll have to see.