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The Bengals are coming off a great season and they hope to build off of it and make a deeper postseason run next year, but to make that happen, they need to re-sign most, if not all of their key free agents.
With the NFL Scouting Combine now here, it won't be long until they'll be making some hard decisions regarding next year's roster. As of now, Cincinnati is set to have double-digit starters hit free agency in March unless their contracts are extended between now and then.
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The good news is, the NFL salary cap is going to be bigger than it's ever been in the coming season. That may help the Bengals be able to re-sign their own players, but then again, it may also help another team try to overpay for Cincy's free agents.
Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network and Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk are hearing that the salary cap for next year is going to be $155.27 million:
Source: The 2016 @NFL salary cap was just set at $155.27M.
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) February 26, 2016
Salary cap will be $155.270 million per team this year per source.
— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) February 26, 2016
Here are the most recent 2016 cap projections for the Bengals based on a base salary cap of $155 million, via Over The Cap.
|
Team |
Cap Space |
Players Signed |
Team Salary Cap |
Active Cap Spending |
Dead Money |
|
$38,723,157 |
56 |
$162,712,902 |
$123,796,474 |
$193,271 |
This means the Bengals have about $40 million to work with this offseason.
Here are the Bengals' 2016 free agents arranged by their 2015 cap hit:
|
PLAYER |
POS |
AGE |
'15 Salary Cap |
STATUS |
|
Leon Hall |
CB |
30 |
$9,600,000 |
UFA |
|
Andre Smith |
RT |
28 |
$6,362,500 |
UFA |
|
Reggie Nelson |
S |
31 |
$4,775,000 |
UFA |
|
Vincent Rey |
OLB |
27 |
$3,100,000 |
UFA |
|
Adam Jones |
CB |
31 |
$2,550,000 |
UFA |
|
Emmanuel Lamur |
OLB |
25 |
$2,356,000 |
UFA |
|
Wallace Gilberry |
DE |
30 |
$2,050,000 |
UFA |
|
Mohamed Sanu |
WR |
25 |
$1,682,813 |
UFA |
|
George Iloka |
S |
25 |
$1,582,075 |
UFA |
|
Eric Winston |
RT |
31 |
$950,000 |
UFA |
|
Brandon Thompson |
DT |
25 |
$795,300 |
UFA |
|
Marvin Jones |
WR |
25 |
$700,700 |
UFA |
|
Brandon Tate |
WR |
27 |
$665,000 |
UFA |
|
Pat Sims |
DT |
29 |
$665,000 |
UFA |
|
T.J. Johnson |
C |
24 |
$510,000 |
ERFA |
Marvin Jones, Leon Hall, Adam Jones, George Iloka, and Reggie Nelson are all going to command sizable contracts in free agency, and, they should have the money to re-sign most of them, especially if they extend Kevin Zeitler and Dre Kirkpatrick's contracts instead of paying them on their fifth year options, which each are currently slated to receive. The good news is the Bengals can pass on re-signing Andre Smith after drafting two tackles in the first two rounds of the 2015 NFL Draft. He'll probably get a nice contract as well, but it won't be in Cincinnati.
The Bengals will also need to keep around $5-7 million of the final cap saved up in order to sign 2016 draft picks and have some emergency funds to sign players during next season. They tend to keep close to that limit every year, as evidenced by the $7.5 million carryover cap they're adding on to their cap this year.
Free agency will be here in two weeks, so the Bengals need to get moving now if they want to keep their roster intact and make a run at next year's Super Bowl.