Mike's reaction at the inception of free agency

[Shake n Blake]

(11-09-2019, 02:52 PM)Bengalholic Wrote: Here's more of Mike's reasoning: 

"We try to spend our cap money in ways that we think make sense. Our goal is to retain our own good players if we can. That’s the first order of business. And we can’t always do that with the cap room that we have. We do a lot of it. that is quickly overlooked whenever we do it. Oh, go do this, go do that. Well, the chips to do that have been spent. They’re gone. We look to do what we can within our cap room."

The cap excuse fails on it's face, because not only do the Bengals usually have among the most cap available going into free agency...they also tend to be among the top in space left after free agency. The money is always there to sign a top tier player or two, they just choose not. They are far more comfortable going after low risk discount players and those cut by other teams that won't cost a comp pick to sign. That is the free agency player pool they have almost always targeted.

I thought the NFL made a floor that teams had to reach? Like even if we roll over cap space, we have to make up for it later? Seems all that rule did was make things more confusing for fans to sort out.