Cedric Benson is still unsigned, though how much have you heard of him in the past 24 hours? Derrick Ward will be in Cincinnati this weekend for a visit. While the Bengals are working on whom they're going with as their feature running back, they've signed DeDe Dorsey to a one-year contract.
Dorsey hit the free agency market after the Bengals choose not to offer the restricted free agent a tender. It was a move that figures to save the team some money. We wrote on Thursday that the benefit of not offering a minimum tender, and then signing that player from free agency was around $460,000 based on Dorsey's experience. Even though the terms were undisclosed, we figure there is no point in signing Dorsey if they were weren't going to give him (roughly) the same money as a restricted free agent. So we're fairly confident that the deal is for less than $500,000 -- though who really knows?
It's still a good move, saving money and adding to the depth while the Bengals figure out who their feature back will be. Heading into camp with 5-6 running backs to compete against each other only makes sense.