The Bengals cap space is likely HINTING at some moves

AtoZ Sports

John Sheeran discusses some possible moves the Cincinnati Bengals could make with their current cap space.

Transcript

00:00Are the Bengals done making big moves in free agency? It certainly looks that way on the surface,

00:04but in this video, I'll break down the math and explain how there is still space to do

00:08noteworthy things without expecting anything out of the ordinary.

00:15What's up Bengals fans, Jon Sheeran of A-Z Sports Cincinnati here, and we are officially in the

00:20doldrums of free agency. The vast majority of players who can make a significant impact for

00:25the Bengals, they found other teams. Like maybe one or two of them are on the Bengals right now,

00:30but the majority of meaningful moves the Bengals can make in free agency, they're gone now.

00:36And I know that's concerning to a lot of you. When I look at the roster,

00:39it's certainly not in a position where I would think it should be entering the NFL draft. But

00:43as with most things, if you do the math and you follow the money, you end up finding more answers

00:48to your questions. And the math here is very simple. It involves salary cap space because

00:53after Lucas Patrick signed his one-year $2.1 million deal, the Bengals have just over $23

00:59million in off-season salary cap space. Now, what does off-season cap space mean? Well,

01:04it's the sum of the top 51 cap hits on a roster plus dead money, which is just money leftover

01:09that's already been paid out to players who've been recently cut. And then you subtract that

01:13from whatever the adjusted cap ceiling is for that given team. Now, the 23-ish million dollar

01:18number that we're working with here, that's important because typically the Bengals will

01:22end up somewhere a little bit below that when they are officially done with adding players.

01:27In tracking this team's financial trends over the better part of the last decade doing this job,

01:31typically it's $17 to $18 million in off-season space when you can think that, yes,

01:35the Bengals are officially done doing anything of significance. So that leaves us with about

01:39$5 to $6 million in additional cap space that I would expect the Bengals to use in some way,

01:43shape, or form. Now, what that ends up being, I think we can all assume that the obvious answer

01:48here is that a Trey Hendrickson extension will likely raise his cap hit from the current spot

01:52of like $18.6 million. You could see that rise into the low 20s, which would eat up most of that

01:57remaining $5 to $6 million in space that they want to use. And the reason why Hendrickson's

02:02cap hit would go up this year with an extension is because the Bengals are going to try to increase

02:06the amount of cash that Hendrickson would earn this year to match what Max Crosby and Danielle

02:10Hunter are making, which is around $32 to $33 million. As it stands right now, Hendrickson

02:14is set to earn about $16 million in cash, which obviously is significantly lower than those other

02:19two guys. So the Bengals are going to try to get it into that range of the 32 to 33, maybe even

02:23$34 million this year. And pretty much all of that is going to be in the form of bonuses, whether

02:26it's assigning bonus has prorated over the life of the deal, or it's just a roster bonus that gets

02:30placed on the cap this year. Regardless, Hendrickson's cap is going to go up and that's

02:34going to eat into the cap space that the Bengals have for the rest of the soft season. And that

02:38may just be it, right? There's been multiple reports recently that the Bengals are still

02:41working on this. They're still communicating. This is the goal that they're trying to achieve,

02:45and they're not really interested in trading him. So this seems to be the logical conclusion

02:48for whatever this ends up. But I still think it's possible that the Bengals could create

02:51more cap space to do more outside of just extending Hendrickson. Like I know Brandon

02:55Shurf has been brought up a ton. He's been brought up by me multiple times on this channel.

02:58If the Bengals were to sign him to like maybe a one year, seven, $8 million deal,

03:02that's obviously a lot of cap space that would eat into however much the Bengals want to save

03:06for the remainder of the off season. But you can offset that cap hit by just releasing players

03:09that are expected to be cut at the end of the day regardless. For example, if Shurf or another

03:13guard were to be signed with the intent of starting, the Bengals could create cap space

03:17to offset whatever that cap is by just releasing Cordell Volson, who probably isn't going to make

03:21the team if another veteran guard and a rookie end up joining the picture. It's just too crowded

03:25and Volson's $3.8 million cap hit. It's just too much to keep him on the bench. And then there's

03:29running back Zach Moss, who's kind of just hanging out in limbo right now because he's dealing with

03:32a neck injury and the Bengals don't want to officially release him until he's cleared.

03:35So they don't actually owe him money or any more money if they were to release him. But those two

03:39moves right there can basically offset a Brandon Shurf signing or any other signing that the

03:43Bengals would want to make in the near future. Now, of course, the Bengals don't have to make

03:46any of these cuts to afford any of these moves, right? Again, $23 million in cap space goes a

03:51long way when you go from March to April. A lot of the deals that you'll see in free agency,

03:55they're not very lucrative. The reason why $17 to $18 million is basically their cutoff point

04:00is because around $10 million of that goes to draft picks. It goes to off season workouts.

04:04It goes to budgeting for the practice squad in the middle of the season. And then the remaining

04:07$78 million that just carries into the season for any emergency signings. And then eventually it

04:12gets rolled over to next year where we start over the cycle all over again. This team's trends make

04:16it very easy to predict what they're going to do next. So if you do have any natural skepticism

04:20about the Bengals fitting in both a Trey Hendrickson extension and another guard signing,

04:25just know that the math checks out and both are entirely possible.

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