12-05-2018, 01:55 AM
(12-05-2018, 01:07 AM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Did you miss this earlier in the thread?
It wasn't close. They offered him a one year, incentive laden deal of UP to 10 million vs $13 million year 1 w/ the rams and at least $2.5 guaranteed the next year, almost assuring him he wouldn't be on the street in Year 2 at age 35.
— Katherine Terrell (@Kat_Terrell) December 4, 2018
What they were "willing" to go up to (according to them after the fact) and what they actually offered are not the same. They offered an incentive heavy deal that was worth up to $10m.
He got $15m guaranteed from the Rams including $5m in his pocket right then and there.
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Agreed that they were slow to recognize it. After seeing Ogbuehi be the worst OL I had ever seen in my life in 2016 (and previously a little in 2015), I knew he was never ever going to be any good.
Players can make the jump from bad to good with experience, but 2nd year players who are the worst you've ever seen are just busts. It happens. He was the Ryan Leaf/Akili Smith of OL. For whatever reason they refused to just take the L and admit their mistake, doubling down.
It has helped ruin three seasons now, though. They're going to spend so many draft picks and so much money now trying to find a LT. It is a repeat of the JJo situation all over again.
No, I caught that earlier. It's hard to say based on that how much he would have realistically earned. How much was guaranteed at signing, how much was salary, how much was incentives, and how easy were the incentives to reach? It really doesn't matter, because he was going to get more guaranteed money with the multi-year deal with the Rams than any one year deal the Bengals would realistically offer. It still offered at least an opportunity to earn more than he did the year prior, and not a lot of teams are giving well paid 34 year old trench players pay raises, but again, we don't know how much he realistically would have made.
I think a lot of it was Paul Alexander and he supposedly beat his fist on the table for Og and Fisher in the draft. For the Bengals, you knew Whit was getting up there, you planned to replace him, and Piano Man didn't have any high round busts to that point. Paul probably bamboozled Mikey with some "Last year was basically his rookie year," "They were banged up,""LT is his natural position," BS to avoid looking incompetent. I think that ultimately cost him his job.
It isn't as bad as JJo because JJo was in his prime. Whit is realistically on borrowed time and it's freakish that he's as good as he is at his age.