Tee vs a NEW D

[CJD]

(01-02-2025, 06:21 PM)jason Wrote: We've been trained to believe that it's one of the other. Nevermind the fact that Trey is under contract next year so he'll be two years older before we even have to worry about him. He can do his lil trade me thing before the draft this year again if he feels the need.

Even if he threatened to sit out, we have more than enough cap space to sign both long term. Going into the off season, we will be 13th in the NFL with nearly 60 million dollars in cap space. And we can easily pump that up to 90 million if we make a few smart cuts, like Sheldon Rankins (10.5M cap space), Sam Hubbard (9.6M cap space), Alex Cappa (8M cap space), and Zach Moss (3.5M Cap space, 

The thing that usually ties up the Bengals' (and most teams') cap space is re-signing their key free agents, which includes veteran free agents as well as free agents from the rookie class 4 years ago and extending players from the rookie class 3 years ago.

Well, our rookie class 4 years ago was 2021, in which we whiffed on every pick other than Ja'Marr Chase and Evan McPherson (although the latter has not been great recently). So there's no one in that group that requires resigning (other than Chase, but we all saw that coming from a mile away). Maybe they give Joseph Ossai a decent deal, but nothing earth shattering.

And our rookie class 3 years ago was 2022, which also had a ton of whiffs. We've already cut our 3rd round pick from that draft class. CTB was lining himself up to be an extension candidate this off season, but then he had his worst year as a professional, so there's no way we sign him this off season. And then Dax Hill is coming off of an injury, so they won't sign him until they see how he does in his 4th year. I'm curious if they will even pick up his 5th year at this point.

As for our veteran free agents, we got BJ Hill, Mike Hilton, Mike Gesicki, Cody Ford, Trent Brown, Vonn Bell, Tanner Hudson and Akeem Davis Gaither. You figure maybe they keep Hill and Gesicki at decent salaries. Maybe sign Ford and Brown to veteran 1 year deals for Oline depth? Maybe offer Hilton the chance to retire here. But nothing big ticket here either.

Then you got outside free agents. And there aren't that many that are slam dunks for our needs. There's a feww pass rushing DTs that we could sign like Milton Williams. That would be a good pick up. But the DE/OLB pass rusher class is lacking. 

I think with 90M to spend, they could very easily resign Higgins, extend Trey and still land 1 or 2 defensive free agents while still remaining comfortably under the cap. And then they have the entire draft to continue to improve the defense.

I think the Bengals have conditioned the fans to think we're broke or something. But they have plenty of money to spend and cap space to fill. It's just a question of if they are willing to do it properly to keep the best players around.

I would gladly give Tee Higgins the money they save by cutting Rankins and Hubbard. That's just a no brainer to me.