12-29-2024, 01:22 AM
(12-28-2024, 11:29 PM)Isaac Curtis: The Real #85 Wrote: I don't want a pickle...
(there is not one)
We have more than enough cap to patly them both with Chase on the books for $21 mil next year.
Restructure Joe, cut Rankins, Cappa, & Moss, and we have over $100 mil in cap. $75 post Higgins getting tagged.
Use that $75 to extend Chase (around $7-$10 hit), re-sign some of our own higher oriced FA's (Hilton, Gesicki, BJ Hill?), and spend the rest on FA help in the trenches, our picks, and cheaper FA vets (Ossai, ADG, Ford, T. Brown, Hudson, Herbert, or similar level outside FA's.
Higgins will hold in and request a trade if you tag him again.
You also have to give Hendrickson an extension or trade him as he already asked for a trade last offseason and this will be his last chance for a big payday.
Meanwhile a Burrow restructure, Chase extension, Tee signing, and Hendrickson extension would be about $200m that needs to immediately be spent or go into escrow which the Browns/Blackburns are going to be tight about and you've yet to actually improve over the last two years at that point. You still have to spend more to just bring our roster back to 2024 levels and spend more on top of that to ACTUALLY improve with that help in the trenches.
Too cheap an uncreative of an organization for all of that. Their idea of "adventurous" was giving Joe Burrow $9m in void years and I think that's the first time they've ever done that. Hurts meanwhile got $97.5m in his void years. I can't recall times where the Bengals restructured contracts to push cap space into later years. They've done straight up pay cuts to guys, but I don't recall any real cap manipulation.
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Two teams paid their WRs and their QB. The Dolphins and the Eagles.
The Dolphins haven't drafted amazingly and they've kind of gone to shit as the rest of their team got raided in FAs.
The Eagles have drafted well and are absolutely abusing the salary cap rules to shove down cap hits now to try to win a SB now with zero regard to their future 2-3 years from now (they will be absolutely buried under void year dead cap hits for a couple years).
Our FO won't say F-it and just manipulate to the max, and we aren't going to be great drafters for years in a row, so it's going to be real tough to pay 2 WRs and a QB all big money, and then field the rest of a competitive team.
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