08-08-2017, 10:17 PM
(08-08-2017, 07:57 PM)Whatever Wrote: Whit still played very well last year, but he did drop off a bit from previous years. He is already starting to slide. In the NFL, you want to move on before the bottom totally drops out.
Contract talks go both ways. Could the Bengals have offered more money to Whit? Yes. Could Whit have given the team that had given him numerous extensions and made him a very rich man a bit of a hometown discount to stay? Yes. There was no reason for the Bengals to go over what they thought was fair when they had already drafted a replacement, and they offered him well over $10 million. People act like the Bengals should start handing out blank checks every time one of their favorite player's contract is up. They could also not just structure a multi year deal so he could easily be cut due to the Willie Anderson fiasco. Willie was highly paid, oft injured and not that good anymore when they had to cut him, and the fanbase went ballistic. Same thing would've happened with Whit.
The unspoken part of the Whit deal is he was a lot of people's favorite player, and those people think the Bengals should have paid him whatever he wanted for as long as he wanted for him to retire a Bengal. As much as you can call the Bengals cheap for letting Whit walk over a few million, on the flip side, it wasn't worth that few million to him to retire here. Vince Wilfork, Revis, Welker, Vinatieri, etc were all beloved Patriot players who had tread left on their tires when they parted ways. It sucks, but it's part of the business now if you want to be successful.
They have cap space. The Bengals lowballed him and thought there was no way he'd leave. He left.
When you have $17-18 million cap space and don't sign the leader of your offensive line to a 1-2 year deal...the only reason is cheapness.
While they 'drafted his replacement'...the fact that they tried to sign Whitworth shows they weren't confident in Ced. It wasn't like they said...we're 100% confident in Ced so we'll let Whitworth walk. They wanted Whitworth...he left.
