Are the bengals really that cheap?

[muskiesfan]

I think what some people are missing is that cash spent is not the same as cap spent. The Bengals are amazing at making sure they front load deals to eat up cash spent while saving cap money that could be used.

Example, if the Bengals re-signed Iloka and gave him a $10 million bonus, they could count that entire $10 million towards their 2016 cash spent even though that money will be spread across the life of the contract and have a lower cap hit. That's one of the reasons they Bengals love to front load. They can eat up a bunch of cash spent money and be above the floor while still being able to kick cap money down the road.

You can keep throwing around how well the Bengals are doing by outspending the league, but those numbers are skewed. Cap space is a better year-by-year than cash spent. Why the NFL bases the floor off of cash spent is beyond me. It allows people like Mike Brown to count signing bonuses in 1 year, while saving cap space each year.

At the end of the day, every NFL team has to deal with the draft, injuries, practice squads salaries, bonuses, etc, etc. Most teams have X amount of cap space and do everything they can to get as close to that as possible, even with all of the other things listed. The Bengals immediately lower their cap space and try to spend below it. Do they really need to kick $8-10 million down the road every year? Their franchise QB, #1 WR, and 2 top DL are locked up. Why are they still saving that money? Is it to re-sign this years draft picks? It makes no sense.