FanPost

How should the Bengals handle this offseason?

There are four options of what we could do:

1) Attack OL/Offense in FA heavy and go BPA-Defense in the draft
2) Attack Defense in FA heavy and go BPA-Offense in the draft
3) Spray and pray in FA hoping we land some talent and draft where we missed
4) "Mike Brown Special" aka retain our guys and have a lot of needs in the draft

Going in to each of options 1-3 I'd say we cut Geno, Hart, and restructure Gio. This would leave us with ~$60M in cap. Removing the $9.4M in projected draft contacts leaves ~$50M.

Option 1

Thought process: Protect the king of Ohio and give him weapons. Create a dynamic and explosive offense. Resign Lawson and hope Darius Phillips can keep improving to be our CB2. Sam Hubbard needs to develop his pass rush more.

Re-sign: Lawson, Allen, Hunt, Huber, and rotational/PS players. Alexander will want to test the market, but try to keep him.

FA Signing: OT/OG/WR. You could pay big for Moton (T), Thuney (G), and Conley (WR) right here and still be able to sign a bargain DT or LB to a one year deal.

Draft: Pick five would probably be Surtain/Pitts/WR/Edge or more likely a trade back assuming Sewell is gone. We'd have to focus on iDL, edge, and CB

Pros: Offense gets better. OL should vastly improve. Mixon and Burrow thrive.
Cons: Already poor defense gets worse in a tough AFCN division

Option 2

Thought process: Our secondary was top ten in 2020 and what held it back was lack of pass rush. I'd also argue that Anarumo is a bigger liability than our OL is and forcing talent on his side will mask his ineptitude. It's a really good OT and CB draft, so we can hope our future RT is in there

Re-sign: Lawson, Alexander, WJ3, Allen, and Wilson

FA Signing: A big name like Shaq Barrett, Leonard Floyd, or Shelby Harris. You're just looking for pressures to allow the secondary to thrive. Still add a piece to the OL like Matt Feiler or Corey Linsley to improve it. Save the rest to extend JB3.

Draft: OT at 5 or trade back. Brevin Jordan would be a heck of a grab in R2 if he's still there. More OL to develop and rotate during the season. Probably use two picks for a DT and CB and go offense for the rest of them.

Pros: Opens up the draft and plays to the strengths of it. Nearly there on defense and this may put us over the edge of having a top ten defense.
Cons: OL still a question mark going in to the season unless we hit a homerun on a pick or if Pollack is that good. No clear WR1 going in to the season.

Option 3

Thought process: Trying to make a splash signing of anyone willing to come to Cincy. Hard to resign your own players anticipating who you can or can't get in FA.

Re-sign: Really depends how much money you want to spend on outsiders. Let's say they let all of them walk other than maybe Allen, Wilson, Huber, and Q Spain.

FA Signing: Really anyone to make you look good in the news. You'd have about $40M to spend. Since the draft is strong in OT and CB, I'd leave those positions open and go after Edge, iOL, and WR here. Allen Robinson and Brandon Scherff would be huge. Thuney and Floyd would work. Linsley and Hunter Henry. Honestly, tough to figure this out, but a couple big names or a few solid names without a focus on one area in particular.

Draft: Depends on what needs are left at this point. OT and CB heavy here.

Pros: Could hit big and maybe the news will stop dogging the Bengals.
Cons: May miss out on your first few attempts and end up overpaying a player to fill a need in FA.

Option 4

Thought process: Made here, stays here. Something we're used to and probably expect. Thought is that we're close to getting it all clicking and can probably get a discount on resigning our guys. Probably what's going to happen to be honest.

Re-sign: All of the major players.

FA Signing: A couple one year deals for players at probably LB and OL. Probably don't cut Geno, Hart, or Finley here. Nothing major here.

Draft: Pick five will be a tackle or WR. They'll probably draft one of each position of need here like they usually do. Probably reach for someone that we could have waited on.

Pros: We won't crush our cap going in to 2022 and beyond.
Cons: The team needs quite a few more pieces and time to get rolling. Pass rush will be weak.

Final thoughts: I've been using the Fanspeak off season simulator (Link Here) to test and retest each of these methods over the past couple of days. The method that seems to pay out on paper more consistently is #2. We won't lose much in the 2022 FA other than Bates, Phillips, Hubbard, and Tate so we shouldn't be in a pinch to resign any big players (other than Bates) until Jonah in 2023. So I think we can ride the edge of the cap this year pretty close to get us stronger moving forward.

Of course this is still dependent on what the cap is. I think the simulator has it at $185M, but as others have stated earlier the NFL will probably have to raise it because so many (larger) teams will be negative.

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of Cincy Jungle's writers or editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan, which is as important as the views of Cincy Jungle's writers or editors.