2025 Free Agency - Who do you want, how much would you spend?

[Luvnit2]

If we are going to go down the percentage of cap per player, there are a few things we need to consider.

Each team has different cap dollars based on rolling over prior year cap dollars. Bengals have 279 million in 2025 to start as they have 5 million to roll over.

I have stated this in other threads, long term contracts can be structured to meet the demands of guaranteed money and include large signing bonuses. The signing bonuses can be exercised over the term of the contract. So, a 60 million dollar signing bonus for a 4-year contract can have a cap hit of 15 million each year for 4 years. The bonus goes toward guaranteed money as well.

I think there is confusion for simplicity's sake that if a player gets a 100-million-dollar contract for 4 years the cap hit is 25 million a year. Most long-term contracts have signing bonuses and of course guaranteed money. These two factors make the cap hit less in the early years than the 25 million figure.

For example, Chase has a cap hit for a 1 year 2025 option by the Bengals for 21.6 million. The Bengals could sign Chase to a long term and contract, pay him a higher average salary per year, but not pay much more than the 21.6 cap in years one and 2 of the contract.


The Bengals are looking at massive contracts for Chase and possibly Trey and Tee so the structure of these deals to make them cap friendlier can be used by the team if
they so choose.

For those who say the Bengals do not structure deals, you need to look at current deals. We get dead money of we terminate deals early. If we cut Hubbard, Rankins or any of the guys mentioned by others, we save cap dollars and save cash, but we also incur dead money for those contracts due to signing bonuses.