Josh Norman just became a UFA

[Shake n Blake]

(04-23-2016, 09:14 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: This, a lot, Shake. Sure you can say "we normally let people play out their contracts".. do you want to be the exception? Because it's not an "always" it's a "normally" or whatnot.

There's been plenty of people who didn't play out their contract with the Bengals. Bryant, Allen, Coles, Harrison, Odom, Johnson got traded, Tank Johnson got cut 1 year into a 4 year deal because he didn't have any more guaranteed money. Shit, this is just off the top of my head and there's more than I thought recently-ish.

Unless it says fully guaranteed, a lot of contracts are mostly guaranteed for generally just injury. Like Norman's $75m, $50m is guaranteed, but only $36.5m fully guaranteed. That means they can cut him right this second for being a turd or not being able to cover a rock and he gets $36.5m.. if he tears both his knees by slipping on two banana peels in training camp, he still gets $50m. That's $40-45m-ish more than he would have likely gotten with the Bengals if he suffered a career ending injury.

In some ways I like the way the Bengals do contracts. The relatively small amount of guaranteed money gives us options when players get injured or fail to produce. The downfall is that we are destined to lose players who value more guaranteed money on these "similar" contracts.