Will Fuller and Bengals are not a perfect fit

The Cincinnati Bengals are primed to have another active free agency period.

Offensive line will almost certainly be the primary focus, as protecting quarterback Joe Burrow is an era Cincinnati must make drastic improvements in.

However, with receivers A.J. Green, John Ross, Alex Erickson and Mike Thomas set to hit free agency, the Bengals could look to sign an impact wide receiver as well.

Recently, Seth Galina of Pro Football Focus tabbed the Bengals as the best fit for Houston Texans receiver Will Fuller.

In Fuller, the Bengals would get a speed demon who can complement the other players in the receiving corps.

Given Burrow’s accuracy in the intermediate range (1-19 yards downfield) and Tyler Boyd‘s big catch radius already entrenched in Cincinnati, the Bengals don’t strictly need a tried-and-true player who can get separation.

Instead, they could target Fuller’s downfield speed, which would go a long way toward improving a passing attack that ranked 31st in deep passing yards in 2020 (470). Fuller also quietly had the ninth-highest grade at receiver in the league last season, at 86.2.

While Fuller sounds nice in theory, he’s absolutely someone the Bengals should want no part of, assuming he’s going to sign a fairly nice deal PFF actually projects him to sign a five-year deal for $87.5 million with $25m guaranteed.

Uh, no.

Not only has Fuller been extremely injury-prone, missing 27 games in five seasons, he was also hit with a six-game suspension this past season that will have him sidelined Week 1 this coming season.

Even if Fuller signs a more modest deal paying him around $7-10 million annually, he’s still a disaster waiting to happen, especially if he signs with a Bengals team that already has some of the worst injury luck of any NFL team.

And lest we forget about the John Ross experiment. After enduring that for the last four years, the Bengals don’t need to keep it going in the form of Fuller, who is absolutely a better player than Ross but has been just about as injury-prone.

The Bengals can do better with the cap space they’re going to have than to sign up for John Ross 2.0.