Bengals 2021 draft will be shaped by our Free Agency at CB, DE, and WR

[Jpoore]

(11-01-2020, 02:04 PM)BoomerFan Wrote: Corner could be especially interesting. William Jackson's contract will be up for renewal. Also you have this large contract for Trae Waynes who has been injured this year. And you have the unexpected shrinking of the Salary cap from $208 million to $175 million due to COVID19. We spent $197.5 million out of the cap in 2020. We need to cut or not re-sign $25 million from the roster, and probably another ~$7 million on top of that for rookie signings.

https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/cincinnati-bengals/contracts/

Williams Jackson: I'd do a 5 year contract at the $6.3 million per year spotrac says he is worth. Heck back load it a bit so that once COVID is over and the cap starts going up you're paying him a bit more. Call it a $35 million contract. Remember, we're already paying him $2.5 million per year now so this is only an increase of ~$4 million. So now you need to cut $36 million in cap elsewhere.

AJ Green and John Ross: Letting Ross walk is easy. AJ is another matter. It is hard not to be sentimental here but we can't even afford 9 million and some other team will overpay for him. He might be happier with a chance at a last hurrah elsewhere too. $22 million in cap savings goes a long way to fixing our problems. Higgins and Boyd are your new stars, and hopefully you can draft some more along the way (perhaps even in later rounds this year). None of them will be AJ Green but in the aggregate you can have a talented enough WR corps to be productive.

Trae Waynes: I'm not sure what the team will do here. Normally we'd keep him no doubt. Sure he's injured now but he could still be productive for the remaining two years of his contract. However in light of the reduced cap it might make sense to eat the loss. He is being paid $14 million a year though $5 million of that is dead cap. So a $9 million savings. I'd say...do the hard thing and cut him. I know we have many draft needs but I'd plan on drafting a corner high as one of them - maybe 1st round given where we are drafting may not have a good value for DE or OL. Shaun Wade would be the sort of pick we like to make.

Shawn Williams: Let him walk. He's playing about the same as Vonn Bell and it saves us more to part with Williams after you figure dead cap in (and could potentially result in a comp pick). Also Bell is younger and is more likely to improve as he spends more time here. This saves you $5 million and you are now where you need to be cap wise (~$36 million cut).

PFF grades Shawn Williams vs Vonn Bell

Williams has had a slight edge on Bell through week 6

Vonn Bell was slightly better in week 7

So basically it is a push. Let's see if Bell can become a better player given more time here becoming familiar with the system and having a chance to gel with other players.

Carl Lawson: So here is where things get tricky. Lawson has been playing well on a bad line. In order to keep him we're gonna need to find ~$5 million somewhere. You could save $2 million by cutting Billy Price before his final year. I might consider letting Cethan Carter walk too which saves you another $2 million. So you are close. However if you do that you're probably committing to drafting a TE in the late round.

I'm imagining most other Bengals players who have a contract that is up in 2021 are either renewed or replaced by a player priced the same as the current contract for that position. 

So in light of all that I'm imagining a draft that looks like this:

1st Shaun Wade, Corner, Ohio State
2nd Nick Bolton, Middle LB, Missouri (could potentially let Josh Bynes walk if we needed the cap space badly enough)
3rd Shaka Toney, EDGE, Penn State
4th Interior offensive line, maybe Zion Johnson, Guard, Boston College
5th WR
6th Strong Safety
7th a Blocking TE
7th b WR

Is it perfect? No. I know many would like us to draft a DE earlier than the 3rd and possibly multiple DEs. But it does get us in the ballpark of where we need to be capwise while giving the team a chance to grow in what will be a tough year for all teams due to the shrinking cap. The first 4 picks have one offensive linemen and 3 defensive players and I think most people will agree that roughly the sort of draft we'll be going for. Then again, maybe we are actually close to getting our offensive line woes sorted out and that 4th round pick could be another defensive pick as well (perhaps a 2nd DE like Dayo Odeyingbo, EDGE, Vanderbilt).

Thoughts?

Wj3 is gonna get 11-14 million per year. No way he only gets 6.5 he’s having a career year. We have about 42 million in cap space. Gonna have to get creative. Assume 15 million to bates. Another 12 to Wj3. There’s 27. Then u got Lawson, and a few others.