If this Man was....

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(10-18-2022, 10:07 PM)Big_Ern Wrote: I think those picks were no-brainers though.  Some of the later-round high-character guys and especially free-agent gems are what make this team.  Albeit the occasional misses here and there.  One of Zac's first order of business was cutting Burfict (one of my favorite players) and he wouldn't have drafted Thurman, Henry or signed Pac-man or Tez.  We were the laughing stock of the NFL for a stretch there with all of the arrests.  Marvin and co found some late-round gems too so I'll give them that.  But overall it was always the turds outweighing the good guys and in the end that always cost them.  Like the Steelers playoff meltdown

It's a whole lot easier to pass on high talent high risk players if your FO is shelling out money for tons of decent/good outside FA signings. If you're exclusively having to build your team out of drafted players/UDFAs/extremely cheap bottom-of-the-barrel FAs/redemption project FAs, you have to make some compromises if you want enough talent to compete with other teams.

Pacman was signed for under $600k/yr, Burfict was signed for under $500k/yr. The Bengals don't have that playoff appearance streak without them because the alternative wasn't going out and signing Chidobe Awuzie or Vonn Bell caliber players, it was likely having Brandon Ghee and JK Schaffer being starters instead.

Bengals never even stood a chance to win that Steelers playoff game without Burfict. 1 Sack, 2 TFL, 1 PDef, 1 INT, 1 FF... holding the 4th scoring offense to 18 points despite the Bengals offense scoring 0 points for the first 46 minutes while giving the Steelers the ball 4 times that directly led to 9 of those 18 points.