Poll: Is AJ McCarron being an unrestricted free agent the right call?

Finally, we know the free agent status of AJ McCarron.

After initially being a restricted free agent in 2018, McCarron filed a grievance against the Bengals in hopes of changing his status to an unrestricted free agent. He’ll now be free to sign with anyone without said team having to give compensation to the Bengals.

However, the Bengals will still get some type of draft pick from this ordeal, though it will be a compensatory pick in 2018. It also will be, at best, a third-round pick, so it won’t be close to the reported second and third-round picks the Bengals were set to get from the Browns in a trade that fell through at the 2017 trade deadline.

This whole situation began because McCarron opened his NFL career on the NFI list in 2014, causing him to miss the grist 14 games, which in turn led to him not acquiring a year of service. But McCarron argued that he was healthy enough to play far sooner than the Bengals activated him, and it appears the arbitrator also thought so.

Truth is, McCarron was probably healthy enough to be activated sooner, but the Bengals kept him on NFI to prevent him from taking up a roster spot as a third quarterback. That’s probably why the Bengals delayed activating him, which shouldn’t cost McCarron a year of accrued service.

Saying all of this, did the arbitrator get it right with this ruling?