Are the bengals really that cheap?

[BengalChris]

(03-05-2016, 11:17 AM)fredtoast Wrote: I don't.

I enjoy watching the team on the field.  It make no difference to me how much gatorade they get to take home, or how big their towels are.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think the Bengals are the cheapest team in the league. They have turned things around and put a good product on the field for the last 5 years.

But, I also look and see that the team has gotten to the point where it's going to take a little more financial effort to improve it so that it reaches the next level, which would be a SB caliber team. And no, they were not a SB caliber team in 2015 as we all witnessed by how it lost that playoff game.

When you look at the effort it's taken to get the team to this point, how do you then tighten it down financially and not go that extra step to finish it off?

It's not like the team we field in 2016 is going to be the same team as 2015. Four or Five highly productive starters are going to be gone and possibly a number high contributors off the bench. These are not going to be replaced by better players in free agency. Let's face it, the Bengals are not going to find someone better than Marvin Jones or Adam Jones in its annual bargain hunt in July. We do have Williams waiting in the wings for Iloka, but Iloka was clearly a level above Williams. Dennard may be good, but is he good enough to make up for an almost entirely new secondary? We are all expecting Og to be better than Andre Smith and some might argue that.

Dennard, Kirkpatrick and Shaw as the corners is just the bare minimum to run this complex defense. The defense is predicated on having 4 quality corners and a 5th guys who knows the system who can pinch hit in case of injury.

Further, recent defensive draft selections have been largely disappointing. There's no one waiting in the wings to replace Peko, Dunlap, MJ and Atkins or even Gilberry who was the 1st guy off the bench and there's a need for cover LB, which has been a hole for awhile and is still a hole.

We have this discussion every year and every year we go one and done.