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Bengals’ cap space carryover for 2017 NFL season announced

The Bengals will carry over a large chunk of change from last year, hopefully to help the team re-sign guys like Dre Kirkpatrick and Andrew Whitworth.

NFL: Philadelphia Eagles at Cincinnati Bengals Aaron Doster-USA TODAY Sports

As is usually the case, Cincinnati will be carrying over a significant amount of cap space from the previous season.

According to the latest cap figures from the NFLPA, the Bengals will carry over $6.5 million from the 2016 calendar year into 2017.

Every NFL team elected to carry over unused salary cap space from 2016. The smallest carryover amount is $113,693 by the Chargers, and the largest is $50,123,866 by the Browns. Without the Browns and 49ers included, the league average is $6,196,622.84, which is just slightly less than what the Bengals have to rollover to next season.

According to the latest projections from Spotrac, Cincinnati will have around $47 million in cap space this year, and they’ll need every bit of it. The Bengals have several key free agents set to hit the market, including Andrew Whitworth, Dre Kirkpatrick and Kevin Zeitler.

All three of those guys stand to make $10 million (or more) in 2017, so that right there could account for most of Cincinnati’s cap space. Even re-signing just two of the three will take up a lot of space, depending on how much of the contracts are frontloaded.

The Bengals would be wise to frontload a lot of money into this year for a guy like Kirkpatrick, which would lessen his cap hit in future seasons.

And that’s not even accounting for the players who need to be extended this offseason before their impending free agency in 2018. Vontaze Burfict, Tyler Eifert, Jeremy Hill, and Russell Bodine are all slated to hit free agency next year, and depending on who from that group the Bengals want to re-sign, that too could account for a portion of this year’s cap space.

Here’s a list of the Bengals’ 2017 free agents:

Bengals 2017 free agents

Player Pos. 2016 Team Type Current APY Guarantees Status
Player Pos. 2016 Team Type Current APY Guarantees Status
Andrew Whitworth LT Bengals UFA $9,000,000 $2,000,000
Domata Peko 4-3 DT Bengals UFA $4,500,000 $4,400,000
Brandon LaFell WR Bengals UFA $2,500,000 $1,000,000
Dre Kirkpatrick CB Bengals UFA $2,155,749 $7,840,065
Karlos Dansby 4-3 OLB Bengals UFA $2,000,000 $700,000
Kevin Zeitler RG Bengals UFA $1,886,050 $6,125,446
Eric Winston RT Bengals UFA $1,090,000 $80,000
Cedric Peerman RB Bengals UFA $1,065,000 $250,000
Margus Hunt 4-3 DE Bengals UFA $917,775 $1,049,892
Wallace Gilberry 4-3 DE Bengals UFA $885,000 $0
Brandon Thompson 4-3 DT Bengals UFA $840,000 $50,000
Chykie Brown CB Bengals UFA $760,000 $0
Randy Bullock K Bengals UFA $675,000 $0 Re-Signed
T.J. Johnson C Bengals RFA $600,000 $0
Rex Burkhead RB Bengals UFA $565,550 $102,200

And, here are the Bengals’ 2018 free agents who the team could get a head start on re-signing this offseason:

Bengals 2018 free agents

PLAYER POS. AGE 2017 AAV STATUS
PLAYER POS. AGE 2017 AAV STATUS
A.J. McCarron QB 26 $600,413 RFA
Rey Maualuga ILB 29 $5,000,000 UFA
Kevin Huber P 31 $2,800,000 UFA
Jeremy Hill RB 24 $938,401 UFA
Clark Harris LS 32 $990,000 UFA
Marquis Flowers OLB 24 $574,670 UFA
Tyler Eifert TE 26 $2,064,000 UFA
Will Clarke DE 25 $705,095 UFA
Vontaze Burfict OLB 26 $4,751,000 UFA
Russell Bodine C 24 $669,114 UFA
Kevin Minter LB 26 UFA
Andre Smith OT/OG 30 UFA