06-10-2025, 09:40 AM
(06-09-2025, 04:53 PM)ochocincos Wrote: Yea but if that's the case, it still hampers/hampered the Bengals to not have that freed up sooner and could have pursued other FAs earlier.
The only thing I can think of is the FO feels the roster is championship contender-worthy without Pratt today and the only things needed to improve the team were new coaches, a new true run-stuffing 1T, a new B/C tier starting RG, and some draft picks (which I would disagree with).
If we look at the new faces for the starters, the Bengals really are going to have just 3-5:
RG - Patrick
LG - Fairchild
NT - Slaton
SLB - Knight
Burks/Carter in 3-LB looks
Potentially just 2-3 if it ends up actually Volson and Ford winning the OG spots.
Will that be enough to confidently think the Bengals can get back to AFCCG/SB?
You are not wrong.
We also lost depth at CB (Hilton), S (Bell), OT (Brown), and TE (All injury). I know Holton & Bell clearly had lost a step, but they still graded out better than any other CB & S we have, respectively. Which is saying something.
Clearly, on D we feel that the change in scheme/coaches + continued development of our younger guys + a better health will make a significant improvement. We did get LB help (Burks, Knight, Carter, Giles-Harris), 1T help (Slaton) & Stewart. Plus bringing back BJ, Ossai, & Sample.
But we really need the DBs to play much better under Golden. And Hill & Turner being healthy should help. But CTB, D. Hill, Turner, Battle, Jenkins, Jackson, Murphy, and Ossai leveling up & Stone bouncing back is what we are counting on.
I think it is *mostly* too optimistic, but not crazy. And if we had paired the bounce back/level up strategy on D with a more agfressive upgrades to the IOL I'd be way more optimistic. But we, intentionally in my opinion, chose not no max cap space on the Chase/Tee deals ($11 mil), chose not to restructure Burow, even though he offered ($19 mil), and kept a couple guys around when cutting them instead of restructuring could have bought a frontline player ($7 mil for Moss/Volson).
Now, given the cash constraints the Brown family has, doing all 3 was always unlikely. But even 1 or 1.5 could have made a big difference.
Calais Campbell ($6 mil cap) and Teven Jenkins ($2.3 mil) were had for just over $8 mil combined. Throw in Risner/Hernandez for another $4-5 mil and we could have taken Watts or Winston Rd 3.
I am disappointed but not surprised. It is who the Brown family are. Ownership is an anchor to our title aspirations. It is just a fact. And even with the window for Trey/Burrow/Chase slipping away, they still cannot (or will not) do any better.
I guess there is still some time. And enough cap to get Trey done plus maybe one more vet move. But our $23 mil or so in cap is gonna get eaten up by a Trey deal.
