Why haven't the Cincinnati Bengals made more moves in free agency?

AtoZ Sports

John Sheeran speculates why the Cincinnati Bengals haven't made more moves in free agency thus far.

Transcript

00:00Bengals free agency has died down tremendously fast and I can't quite grasp why that's the case

00:05But when looking back at some comments made at the scouting combine something becomes incredibly clear to me in this video

00:10I'll explain what that is

00:14Hi again bengals fans john sheeran of a disease sports cincinnati here and i'll be honest with you guys

00:20I am just as confused as a lot of you are now to be perfectly fair. This is the bengals

00:26I recognize they have a reputation a lot of people who are still fans of the team

00:30Hold on to this reputation and always like to bring it up for weeks specifically like this

00:35but I still land on confused as my main emotion here because

00:39Something is definitely missing a few days ago

00:42I posted the video recapping all the moves the bengals had made in free agency

00:45They signed samadji pirine tj slayton oran bergs. They brought back joseph assai bj hill and since then

00:53They've done pretty much nothing marco wilson cam sample being brought back on cheap one-year deals perfectly fine

01:00They can't be your only moves since monday of legal negotiating full transparency

01:04I'm recording this video on thursday at 5 30 in the afternoon because I gave them a lot of time to do something

01:12Anything that was relatively expected

01:15Nothing's happened and I recognize that there is still time for some things to still happen

01:20But where i'm at right now is if even if something again

01:23Relatively expected does happen. It doesn't feel like enough has happened at all this week, which again

01:30boggles my bengals altered mind because there's obviously a difference between going all in and the bengals going all in right

01:37Everything is relative the bengals are never going to put cash over cap and guarantee future years

01:43And put themselves in potential situations where they have to deal with oodles of dead cap in future years

01:48That's not going to happen

01:48But relative to the past five years

01:51This is by far the most bleak and dreary looking free agency class

01:55The bengals have compiled and the last we heard about it changing at all was interest in guard tevin jenkins

02:01And that's been two days in the making and there's been radio silence ever since the bengals could sign jenkins between

02:07When i'm done recording this video and when it's posted and that'll be that right even if they do even if that is the one

02:13Last move that they make in free agency and the roster gets to 70 players and they move on to the draft

02:18Does anybody feel like this team is remotely good enough or to the level that it should be?

02:24Entering the second week of free agency because I sure don't feel that way

02:28There were opportunities to bring in veteran help for the pass rush

02:31Whether that was a defensive tackle or on the edge

02:33A lot of those good options are pretty much gone by now

02:35You look at linebacker oren birx was a decent addition

02:38But if you're planning on replacing jermaine pratt with a veteran those options are pretty much gone by now

02:43You had the cap space and based off of how they spend cash you had plenty of cash left over

02:47To make one or two more impactful moves and those moves probably don't exist anymore

02:51And again, i'm trying to stay within the constraints of what the bangles consider to be an aggressive free agency week

02:57They've been so much more aggressive in years past compared to this

03:00This is not even remotely close to what expectations were and the worst part is the expectations

03:05Were set by duke tobin himself and that's what confuses me the most because two weeks ago

03:10He went on record to the world that he doesn't want to spend more on the same team as the 2024 squad

03:16But right now that is looking like it's going to be the case

03:19The only notable improvement on the roster right now is nose tackle with tj slayton just because they didn't have a nose tackle last year

03:26Everything else has barely barely moved the needle when tobin made those comments at the combine

03:31I thought one of two things was true either a he was speaking from a place of confidence that he had

03:36Assurances that certain moves are going to be made and that the roster was going to be in a much different spot than it is

03:40Right now or b he was pleading to the front office to make sure that these moves could happen

03:46And that they would have the financial capability to do them and at this point

03:49It's looking like he was pleading more than anything now

03:51I don't think it's over based off of how much cap space they have based off the fact that they were looking

03:56At a guard and there are still options at that position

03:58but again

03:58Even if they do sign a guard and replace alex cappa and then draft a rookie to compete with cody ford and cordovalson

04:04And they have the offense fixed. This defense is scary and not in a good way

04:08You're looking at no new additions to this pass rush

04:11Every new addition is going to be unproven through the draft and that is always risky

04:15You're probably relying on a rookie linebacker to replace pratt or you're bringing pratt back after he couldn't move at all last year

04:21I didn't expect much change in the secondary

04:22But unless they draft to safety early that's putting a lot of faith in geno stone

04:26Obviously taking a leap

04:27There are a lot of bets happening right now on development of who they have in the building

04:31And not all of them are going to hit and mind you they only have six draft picks right now

04:35They need to hit on at least half of them immediately for all these problems to be fixed

04:39It really is tough guys

04:40I think in any of the last five years you could have convinced yourself the bengals made some strides with the roster

04:46After the first week of free agency

04:47I think this is the first time since zach taylor's first year in 2019 when all they did was like sign bw web

04:53They re-signed bobby hart. They signed kerry win

04:55They basically did nothing and they ended up finishing 2 and 14 that year if you want to hold on to any sort of hope

05:00It's that the offseason still has six months to go, right?

05:03There are still extensions that could be coming down the pipe with jamar chase t higgins

05:07It's looking more and more likely that trey hendrickson is going to be in town for at least another year

05:11Because it's not looking like they're going to be able to trade him for the price that they want

05:14I think if they had done one of those things before during this week things would be looking at least a little bit better

05:20But there remains to be so much work that this team has to do and eventually time will run out

05:25Like they have been for the entirety of the joe burrow era the bangles are on the clock

05:30And they need to start looking at it

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