https://nfltraderumors.co/nfl-cap-space-1/

Bengals currently have the 15th most cap space, at $19.6 million.

Of course, cutting Dalton would bump us up to 4th most at $37.3 million.

Basically, free agency is pretty much done until Dalton is off the roster.

(03-22-2020, 10:41 PM)Shake n Blake Wrote: https://nfltraderumors.co/nfl-cap-space-1/

Bengals currently have the 15th most cap space, at $19.6 million.

Of course, cutting Dalton would bump us up to 4th most at $37.3 million.

Basically, free agency is pretty much done until Dalton is off the roster.

Sucks it had to go this way, Dalton didn't exactly help himself last season.

I would cut Dalton and Kirkpatrick tomorrow and either grab a LB like Bradham, Ogletree or Bynes.

Or get someone like Daryl Williams for RG and RT.

Could also use the money to extend Mixon or AJ or both. Would wait on AJ though as we don't know how healthy he is.

This is incorrect.

That site got the info from Over The Cap here: https://overthecap.com/salary-cap-space/

That number does not include DJ Reader or Mackenzie Alexander's contracts.

That page cites overthecap.com for its information. That's where I get all my salary cap info too. If you go to overthecap.com itself you'll see that they still haven't accounted for Reader and Alexander, because they don't yet have the yearly break down of their salaries, which are 13.25 and 4 million respectively.

Their cap hits may be lower than their avg yearly salary, but not by that much. So no, we do not have anywhere near 19.6 million in cap space. That's about what we'll have when/if we shed Dalton's salary.

(03-22-2020, 11:45 PM)Geno_Can_Dunk Wrote: That page cites overthecap.com for its information. That's where I get all my salary cap info too. If you go to overthecap.com itself you'll see that they still haven't accounted for Reader and Alexander, because they don't yet have the yearly break down of their salaries, which are 13.25 and 4 million respectively.

Their cap hits may be lower than their avg yearly salary, but not by that much. So no, we do not have anywhere near 19.6 million in cap space. That's about what we'll have when/if we shed Dalton's salary.

Yeah, that's what I thought.  This is another reason that I think both Andy and Dre are goners.  They are probably doing diligence by seeing if they can get something before cutting bait.  

Before FA a Mixon extension was thought to be a foregone conclusion this offseason.  Now they can't afford it.  They need to drop some salary just to get ready for signing rookies.  

Unfortunately, they are over a barrel with Dre and Andy.  Anyone interested has to know that it's a matter of time before they are released.  that being the case, why would anyone give up anything for them? 

It sucks not to get something for Dalton, but I'll take it if that's the cost of an aggressive free agency period.  

I wonder of other unexpected cuts are looming.

(03-22-2020, 10:54 PM)Nate (formerly eliminate08) Wrote: Sucks it had to go this way, Dalton didn't exactly help himself last season.

I would cut Dalton and Kirkpatrick tomorrow and either grab a LB like Bradham, Ogletree or Bynes.

Or get someone like Daryl Williams for RG and RT.

Could also use the money to extend Mixon or AJ or both. Would wait on AJ though as we don't know how healthy he is.

Robby Anderson?

We still don't even know if there will be a season played at all yet. If not it's tough to tell who will still be around the following season and with potentially a global depression on the horizon the league is going to be hard pressed to tell fans that players actually deserve to be paid multi-million dollar salaries. In the face of a possible global depression football while entertaining is a far, far cry from anything resembling essential to the well being of the nation.

(03-23-2020, 05:42 AM)grampahol Wrote: We still don't even know if there will be a season played at all yet. If not it's tough to tell who will still be around the following season and with potentially a global depression on the horizon the league is going to be hard pressed to tell fans that players actually deserve to be paid multi-million dollar salaries. In the face of a possible global depression football while entertaining is a far, far cry from anything resembling essential to the well being of the nation.

Actually, things like football might very well be quite essential on the road back to normal. Or, should I say, on the road to whatever the new normal will be.

(03-22-2020, 11:45 PM)Geno_Can_Dunk Wrote: That page cites overthecap.com for its information. That's where I get all my salary cap info too. If you go to overthecap.com itself you'll see that they still haven't accounted for Reader and Alexander, because they don't yet have the yearly break down of their salaries, which are 13.25 and 4 million respectively.

Their cap hits may be lower than their avg yearly salary, but not by that much. So no, we do not have anywhere near 19.6 million in cap space. That's about what we'll have when/if we shed Dalton's salary.

Agree, I was reading an article over the weekend that said essentially the same thing.  If the Bengals stand pat, as in make no more additions or remove any contracts from the equation, they have about $3M left after rookie/injury pools.

I cannot imagine the Bengals riding it that close to the line.  I have a feeling that if they decide to strike a deal for another player, either Dalton or one of Kirkpatrick/Jackson is as good as cut.

(03-23-2020, 09:06 AM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Agree, I was reading an article over the weekend that said essentially the same thing.  If the Bengals stand pat, as in make no more additions or remove any contracts from the equation, they have about $3M left after rookie/injury pools.

I cannot imagine the Bengals riding it that close to the line.  I have a feeling that if they decide to strike a deal for another player, either Dalton or one of Kirkpatrick/Jackson is as good as cut.

Actually what I'm saying is that it's worse than that. They have somewhere around 3 million left period, which isn't enough to sign rookies. 

We still don't know what Reader's actual cap hit is this year, which might be less than his avg salary (the cap work Philly did to get Javon Hargrave under their cap, if you look at it, is crazy). So maybe we have 4 or 5 million, but the problem remains. 

(03-23-2020, 09:06 AM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Agree, I was reading an article over the weekend that said essentially the same thing.  If the Bengals stand pat, as in make no more additions or remove any contracts from the equation, they have about $3M left after rookie/injury pools.

I cannot imagine the Bengals riding it that close to the line.  I have a feeling that if they decide to strike a deal for another player, either Dalton or one of Kirkpatrick/Jackson is as good as cut.

I don't think that's even correct.
It's projected the Bengals will need ~$11 mill for draft picks.
If the cap space occupied for Reader and Alexander are even at $10 mill combined, they wouldn't have enough to sign their draft picks.
They will almost certainly have to cut Dalton and/or Kirk to give enough room for everyone.

(03-23-2020, 11:35 AM)ochocincos Wrote: I don't think that's even correct.
It's projected the Bengals will need ~$11 mill for draft picks.
If the cap space occupied for Reader and Alexander are even at $10 mill combined, they wouldn't have enough to sign their draft picks.
They will almost certainly have to cut Dalton and/or Kirk to give enough room for everyone.

To sum up, the Bengals have no cap problems.  They can generate from $8million to $25 million in cap space at will by releasing one or two players that aren't important to their 2020 season.

I'd say the front office deserves some Who Dey appreciation for getting all that talented proven defensive help while being in great shape financially. 

(03-23-2020, 11:47 AM)bengals1969 Wrote: To sum up, the Bengals have no cap problems.  They can generate from $8million to $25 million in cap space at will by releasing one or two players that aren't important to their 2020 season.

I'd say the front office deserves some Who Dey appreciation for getting all that talented proven defensive help while being in great shape financially. 

Yes, which is why many of us are pointing out the need to cut or trade those players. There's a little bit of round-and-round to this discussion, as happens on message boards when context gets lost from post to post. 

And cutting Dalton is not as simple as you make it out to be. The front office evidently wouldn't take a late 4th rounder from Chicago for him, so they're going to turn around and release him? That's a little hard to believe. But this has all been discussed elsewhere. 

We can also create cap room be renegotiating AJ, but I'm not holding my breath on that. 

(03-22-2020, 11:43 PM)Synric Wrote: This is incorrect.

That site got the info from Over The Cap here: https://overthecap.com/salary-cap-space/

That number does not include DJ Reader or Mackenzie Alexander's contracts.

Was about to say this.

We still don't have the details for D.J. Reader's contract, so any cap projections are speculation, but if we assume he takes the AAV hit of 13.25 million, that leaves us with approximately 2.3 million in cap space.

Once we get rid of Dalton, that will jump to 20 million, but 11 to 12 million of that will be used for our rookie draft class.

The other 8 to 9 million will likely be used as "injury insurance" or maybe extending Mixon or possibly Jackson, although the latter seems less likely.

Our numbers are telling me we're pretty much done with free agency. We may sign a bit player here or there, but no big signings are possible past this point. At least not until we cut Dre (which it looks like we're not going to, interestingly enough).

(03-23-2020, 11:59 AM)Geno_Can_Dunk Wrote: Yes, which is why many of us are pointing out the need to cut or trade those players. There's a little bit of round-and-round to this discussion, as happens on message boards when context gets lost from post to post. 

And cutting Dalton is not as simple as you make it out to be. The front office evidently wouldn't take a late 4th rounder from Chicago for him, so they're going to turn around and release him? That's a little hard to believe. But this has all been discussed elsewhere. 

We can also create cap room be renegotiating AJ, but I'm not holding my breath on that. 

I'm not advocating cutting either player cuz I don't pretend to understand cap issues in any detail.  I'd like to see the Bengals keep Dalton in the hopes of trading him during the season while giving Burrows some good sideline training.  The Bengals made a commitment with Dalton to work with him on finding a new team, I'd like to see them work that issue til all options are exhausted before cutting him. 

(03-23-2020, 11:47 AM)bengals1969 Wrote: To sum up, the Bengals have no cap problems.  They can generate from $8million to $25 million in cap space at will by releasing one or two players that aren't important to their 2020 season.

I'd say the front office deserves some Who Dey appreciation for getting all that talented proven defensive help while being in great shape financially. 

Yes and no. Their LBs are still completely depleted. Their only off-ball LBs on the roster right now are Pratt and Evans.
Even if you add a LB in Rd 2-3, you still are basically needing to guarantee health of Pratt and newly drafted Day 2 LB due to the lack of depth.
It was wrong of them to not prioritize LB, but the acquisitions of Reader, Waynes, and Alexander were good.

If Geoff Hobson has taught me anything about cap space then this means we'll be fielding a partial roster this year.

We'll probably have to forfeit at least 3 draft picks due to not having enougy in our rookie pool to cover a complete draft class.

And as the season goes on, and we lose guys to injury, things will get even more interesting. I suspect we will be unable to sign replacements and/or be unable to promote practice squad players.

What this means is we're going to be looking at dressing only about 48 guys come December. And we'll sse a number of grievances filed after the season in regards to unpaid settlements and performance bonuses.

It would be really easy to rip the team for forgetting the simple math of this. And perhaps Hobson could've relayed this better had he not be quarantined because of Covid-19. But I get what they're trying to do here. They need to sell tickets.

Can we win with 45 guys? I think we can. Will it sucks not having picks in rounds 4-7? Yeah, but I think we'll be ok. Even if the team is forced to file bancrupcy after the season I think it's all worth it. We're trying something no other team has done before. If we're successfull I could see more teams trying this!

(03-23-2020, 12:56 AM)Okeana Wrote: Robby Anderson?

Wouldn't be against it, great insurance on the outside in case AJ or Ross get injured again.

(03-23-2020, 12:33 PM)ochocincos Wrote: Yes and no. Their LBs are still completely depleted. Their only off-ball LBs on the roster right now are Pratt and Evans.
Even if you add a LB in Rd 2-3, you still are basically needing to guarantee health of Pratt and newly drafted Day 2 LB due to the lack of depth.
It was wrong of them to not prioritize LB, but the acquisitions of Reader, Waynes, and Alexander were good.

For what it's worth, it sounds like they were in the running for both Schobert and Kwiatkoski, but chose to re-allocate their money to more critical positions such as DT and CB when the bidding got too high. I think Schobert was undeniably overpaid. Kwiatkoski I think would have been a good use of 7 million per year, but there's always the chance that he chose the Raiders over the Bengals, I don't know.The linebackers in free agency kind of went for absurd prices all around. Blake Martinez somehow got 10 million per year when he's a replacement level player at LB.

The point is, we were never going to fill all the holes on this team in one year. I am happy with the signings they did do because it allows us to go heavy on offense in the draft. If linebacker remains a huge issue for us in 2020, we can fix it in 2021, when we don't have gaping holes at QB, WR, CB, DT, LB and OL.

(03-23-2020, 01:57 PM)Crazyjdawg Wrote: For what it's worth, it sounds like they were in the running for both Schobert and Kwiatkoski, but chose to re-allocate their money to more critical positions such as DT and CB when the bidding got too high. I think Schobert was undeniably overpaid. Kwiatkoski I think would have been a good use of 7 million per year, but there's always the chance that he chose the Raiders over the Bengals, I don't know.The linebackers in free agency kind of went for absurd prices all around. Blake Martinez somehow got 10 million per year when he's a replacement level player at LB.

The point is, we were never going to fill all the holes on this team in one year. I am happy with the signings they did do because it allows us to go heavy on offense in the draft. If linebacker remains a huge issue for us in 2020, we can fix it in 2021, when we don't have gaping holes at QB, WR, CB, DT, LB and OL.

Nice post CJD, also hope the new LB coach is much better.