12-05-2018, 02:40 PM
(12-05-2018, 02:05 PM)Sled21 Wrote: Yes, and no one here despises CO any more than I do. Should the Bengals have used a franchise tag on Whit, maybe.... probably. But, the plain fact is, they offered him the same money the Rams did on a one year deal, and did not want to sign him long term because they thought he was close to being done. Now people want to act like that was some horrible decision that could only be made by our bumbling staff. He got 4 offers... that means 28 teams also had no interest in trying to get one of the left tackles in the game. That right there tells you a long term deal, though it worked out for LA, was not the smart play. Sometimes you win with the dumb play, sometimes you lose with the smart play. I don't think the Bengals hedged all their bets on CO, but probably thought that between CO and Fisher they could get something. Obviously, they were wrong.
To the bold - of course he didn't get offers from all 32 teams. What free agent ever has? The biggest free agent in any given year only has a handful of teams competing for his services for various reasons. For Whit to have 4-5 teams competing for him at age 34 is pretty impressive, wouldn't you say.
Also, the idea that signing Whit was too big of a risk for the Bengals...I'll repeat what I said before. They could have simply structured the deal the same way the Rams did, and other teams were offering to do: guaranteeing 1 year, being able to easily part ways if it didn't work out. Even if they didn't want to go with that low-risk type of deal for whatever reason...they still had the franchise tag available. That would've have gave them another year of Whit's services while having more time to evaluate Og and/or Fisher, which hadn't shown much at that point. IMO, it was a much bigger gamble to bank on OG as the starting LT - and I said it at the time, not just in hindsight - than it was to give Whit at least one more year. But, they decided to roll with Og and here we are.
As for the Rams signing Whit to a 3 year deal not being a smart play, I disagree because they crafted a deal that minimized their risk if things didn't work out. Even though they were desperate for a LT, they didn't go out and give a crazy deal that vastly overpaid or that they wouldn't be able to get out of. IDK man, that's seems pretty smart and reasonable and the Bengals could've easily done the same...but chose not to.
