Hobson - only $15 million of cap to work with?

[muskiesfan]

(03-01-2017, 12:07 PM)fredtoast Wrote: We are not just rolling money over every year.  the last two years we have been able to spend OVER the league salary cap.  So we are spending the money we roll over.  Without the money we rolled over in '14 wewould not have been able to pay all the players we have the last two years.

The Bengals rolled over $6.5m from last season to this season. It has been reported that the Bengals did not roll that money over for this year's free agents, so they're not going to use it. Jim O and Hobson have both reported this. So the best anyone can guess is that money will be rolled over into next year, and possibly more. That's the only way the team can say they only have $15m for this year.

While you can continue to talk about the whining and bitching, fans just don't understand how the team cuts $43m down to $15m when they have 3 key free agents. Especially after they watch a team with half of our cap space franchise their RB and spend $80m on their top WR. I hope you can understand why there is confusion and why people are "whining and bitching".

The argument of smart spending v. Mike Brown spending not withstanding, the Bengals are notorious for front loading contracts. So the rollover and front loading does allow them to spend over the cap because they gave themselves extra cushion. They spend cash over cap because they can count an entire bonus towards cash spent for that year while spreading the cap hit over the life of the contract (up to 5 years). So you are right in that the spend and they know how to set everything up to meet the floor. Let's not try and act like the Bengals are just throwing money around because looking at our own players that have already left and are potentially leaving, that's just not the case.

So while you swear up and down that you're right, we're actually both right. The Bengals are spending the money and they front load the contracts to eat up cap as well as cash over cap. However, they're not doing the best job of it if we sign our own and roll money over for our free agents, but them limit our cap and watch them leave.