The Bengals have plenty of good players. The question is whether they can — or will — pay them what they’re worth.
Quarterback Joe Burrow, who has been paid what he deserves, said last week that the Bengals “have the cap space to get it done” with the team’s best players who currently are in line for new contract: receiver Ja’Marr Chase, receiver Tee Higgins, defensive end Trey Hendrickson, tight end Mike Gesicki.
“I want to make it happen,” Burrow said. “[W]e all want to stay together. When you have guys that are motivated like that I think you can get those things done.”
Burrow also said he’s willing to restructure. In an interview with the Pardon My Take podcast, Burrow elaborated on how that works. In so doing, he put more pressure on the team to do what’s needed.
“You could convert some of the money to a signing bonus, which will lower the cap hit,” Burrow told PMT, via Ben Baby of ESPN.com. “You can push some of the money to the back end of the contract. That lowers the cap hit. And then when you get to the back end of the contract, you can restructure it and convert it to a signing bonus. You can also just take less money.”
Few franchise quarterbacks ever take less money when they are still in their prime. Even delaying payment until later in the deal is a rarity. The usual approach is to take the salary for the current year, drop it to the league minimum, and convert the rest to a signing bonus.
Burrow has a $25.25 million base salary and a $10 million option bonus due in 2025. His cap number will be $46.25 million. His minimum salary would be $1.17 million. That allows $24.08 million of his base salary to be converted to a bonus that would be spread over multiple years.
With a five-year proration, this would clear $19.264 million in cap space without costing him a penny or deferring any amount of his cash to a future year.
It would boost the Bengals’ projected cap space for 2025 from, via spotrac.com, $49.467 million to $68.731 million. A new deal for Chase would also drop his $21.8 million cap number under the fifth-year option.
The bottom line is there’s a way to do it. As Burrow told PMT of the newest Super Bowl champions, “The Eagles are paying everybody. That seems like the way. Whatever they’re doing.”
But it’s one thing to be able to work the salary-cap niceties and another to cut the checks. The issue in Cincinnati doesn’t seem to be cap management but cash distribution.
As team owner Mike Brown said last year, “You can’t just pay people willy nilly.” In theory, you can. The question is whether you will.
The Bengals paid Burrow, because they really had no choice but to do it. With other players, they’ll possibly be more inclined to reload with draft picks (who are much, much cheaper) and let high-priced veterans walk. They did it with safety Jessie Bates III. They were going to do it with running back Joe Mixon, until the Texans came calling for a trade.
For Higgins, who would earn $26.16 million in 2025 if tagged for a second time, keeping him instead of drafting his replacement becomes a very expensive proposition — especially if Chase wants (as he should) $40 million or more per year.
That’s really the issue for the Bengals. The cap can be handled. The cash must be available. Are the Bengals willing to placate Burrow by writing big checks to multiple teammates? Or will they drag their feet and pinch their pennies?
If the Bengals choose the latter route, the clock could start ticking toward Burrow reaching the same conclusion that Carson Palmer once did.
Palmer explained it like this in 2019: “[I]f the most important thing is the financials and the second-most important thing is winning, then you don’t have a chance. And it’s so important that ownership is willing to do what it takes to win.”
Palmer determined after eight years in Cincinnati that winning wasn’t the most important thing. As Burrow enters year six, he’s essentially challenging the front office to prove that things have finally changed.
If they haven’t, the overriding question will be whether Burrow, like Palmer, will finally decide that he’s had enough.
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
