01-19-2022, 08:59 AM
(01-19-2022, 04:01 AM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Burrow certainly helped, but the biggest change in the culture of Cincinnati football was opening up the check book.
Reader
Ogunjobi
Bell
Hendrickson
Awuzie
Hilton
Reiff
All very uncharacteristic FA signings that brought the Bengals to where they are right now this season. I think that's more >$5m/yr outside FA signings in a 2 year span than the entire rest of Bengals history combined? Something changed in the FO, and I don't think it was because Taylor was the first coach for the Bengals under Mike Brown to ask to sign some good FA. Really makes me sad that this kind of proactive approach wasn't used 2005-2009 and 2011-2015 for what could have been.
Thankfully enjoying the now helps me from dwelling on that, but it doesn't change the fact that the biggest change of Cincinnati football culture is opening up the check book. If they had continued their FA non-approach then this team would still be winning 4 games and looking like the Lions when they had Stafford and Megatron.
People are trying all they can to make it seem like Mike Brown just bought Taylor a winning team. They had to bring in a lot of free agents, because they were ditching the remaining Marvin guys with just a couple of exceptions. Doing smart things like getting two outstanding ccorners for the price of one meh one. During previous years, the same amount of money basically was spent, it was just spent resigning our guys we drafted. As we move forward, and we re-sign guys that are already here, it will again look like we aren't spending on outside free agents. There's always a minimum amount an owner has to spend, by league rules, and since we have the most cap space, we're not spending the most.
