Lou speaks on the state of the defense

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(12-29-2023, 07:41 PM)007BengalsFan Wrote: You dont need to be in the top 80 to save money.   Jonah is making 12.6 million this year.  Next year he is predicted to make the same or more.   Let Jonah walk and replace him with a 1st round draft pick.  Currently the Bengals are sitting at the #18 draft spot which is expected to count 2.7 million against the cap in 2024.  Instead of re-signing Jonah at 12.6 or more, if the Bengals instead used the 1st round draft pick at RT, the Bengals would save 10 million or more against next years cap.  Tyler Boyd is making 10 million this year.  Let Boyd walk and you save another 10 million. Tee Higgins would make about 23 million next year if tagged and would likely try to ask for even more to re-sign on a longer term contract.  Let Tee walk replace him with a 2nd round pick and you save 22+ million.  Joe Mixon redid his contract to pay him 8.5 million next year. If he is cut next year the dead cap space would be 2.75 million but the Bengals could save around 6 million with the cut.

Savings

10m Jonah
10m Boyd
22m Higgins
  6m Mixon

48 million in savings by not having Jonah, Boyd, Higgins and Mixon on the team next year.  This is money that could be spent on adding defensive talent while replacing the lost offensive talent with draft picks.

You're not saving anything by letting Tee leave. He's currently a $3.96m cap hit. You'd spend more money by keeping him, but you're not "saving" money that magically opens up more, because it already isn't being spent. You have $10/month to spend, you're spending $5/month on Netflix, they say that next month it will rise to be $40/month.. unsubscribing to Netflix doesn't give you $50 to spend next month, you only saved $5 and you're back to $10/month.

Jonah and Boyd come off the books, but other guys make even more. Hendrickson's cap hit rises by $5m, Orlando's cap hit rises by $6m, Burrow's cap hit rises by $10m... there goes Jonah and Boyd's "savings" plus another $1m. The expectations of those guys coming off the books are baked into other players contracts having their cap hits rise and now you need a new starting RT, new WR2, and new WR3.

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The Bengals spent the 3rd most % cap space on defense in all of the NFL in 2022 if I remember correctly and were still 16th in overall defense and 6th in scoring defense. No matter how much money you pour into Lou's defense, it's not going to carry the team to the SB. 

You also can't just stick Joe Burrow with an even worse offense loaded with more unproven and untested rookies. At that point you're going to have Volson, a rookie RT, unproven WR #2-4, unproven and/or rookie RB, and we have ZERO TEs under contract for 2024. Why get and pay a Joe Burrow and then drain resources from the offense to double down on a bad defense? 

The team is always going to run through Burrow, so make sure he's protected (and thus healthy) and has solid options around him.