Mr. Castellini would you please buy the Bengals...

[Joelist]

The real question is how can the front office manage to both be middle of the pack-ish in spending AND be perceived by players, coaches and front office people around the league as miserly?

I think the answer is more in HOW they spend money as opposed to how much they spend. They come across as very passive and for want of a better term LAZY in their approach to the offseason. One reason the Glenn trade got such a positive initial reaction was it was for once proactive. Ditto when they actually traded up in the draft recently - it was so unusual for them.

Their typical approach is to be super passive about both free agency and the draft. They typically sit and wait until the quality starters are gone instead of actually doing the work of identifying desired players and then bringing them in and - yes- overpaying if needed to get them. In the draft they tend to sit wherever they are or trade down (Marvin did more than once) instead again of identifying their targets and trading up if needed to get them. Now this may also be the fault of having no scouting department to speak of really which overloads the coaches.