Tee’s market price

[Hammerstripes]

(01-25-2025, 12:52 PM)Isaac Curtis: The Real #85 Wrote: We can tag him for $26 mil or so.

And we absolutely can afford it, and extending Chase & Hendrickson. All we have to do is restructure Burrow (+$19 mil), cut some underperforming guys (Cappa, Rankins, Moss, Volson, and Hubbard nets another $30+ mil).

That's roughly $100 mil in space. And yes, there may be tough decisions on guys like BJ Hill, Hilton, & Gesicki. Or maybe we have to part ways with guys like Drew Sample, Stone, McPherson, and/or Pratt to save some more money (all 4 would net another $17.5 mil).

But paying Higgins, Chase, and Hendrickson is not a hard decision. That's the easy part.

The tougher part is how much to pay & when to cut bait on guys like OBJ, Wilson, Hubbard, Pratt, Stone, Hill, Hilton, Gesicki, Boyd, Chido, Karras, Cappa, etc. Guys who are good but not great.

Bates was up and down instead of consistently great here. Reader was when he was on the field. Bates' inconsistency (even he said he let the contract stuff get to him) and Reader's recent injury made these tougher calls than hindsight suggests.

But the mistakes have also been magnified by the blunders in trying to replace them (Rankins, Scott, Stone, Hill at S, etc.).

This is the right answer.

The cap is going up wrought 8-10% per year.  That's minimum $20 million each year.  There's no reason we can't start pushing some of this money into the future.


There's no reason that you can't back load a few of these deals and sign Higgins, Chase (whose deal won't hit until next year), as well as a guy like Trey Smith and Sweat from the Eagles (if we went that way).

The issue is the gauranteed money.  All that money has to either be paid out as a bonus or put in escrow.  The cash requirement could be a major issue for the Bengals since they don't have a ton.  The cap isn't the issue - the cash is.