The Bengals made a very EXPECTED move on Monday

AtoZ Sports

John Sheeran recaps Germaine Pratt's release from the Cincinnati Bengals and discusses why it took the team till June to do it.

Transcript

00:00The Bengals finally made a roster move that was four months in the making and it has everyone

00:03asking the same question about it. So in this video, I'm going to give you the answer that

00:07the team itself will not admit. Hi again, Bengals fans. John Sheeran of A to Z Sports Cincinnati

00:15here and Jermaine Pratt has finally been released by the Cincinnati Bengals four months after he

00:20first requested a trade-off of the team. Now, I don't have to explain this move to any one of you

00:24guys. This has been a long time in the making, quite frankly, a little too long in the making,

00:28we'll get to that in a second. But Jermaine Pratt has been a quality player for the majority

00:33of his six years in Cincinnati, spending most of those six years as a starter. He was the first

00:37draft pick spent on the defensive side of the ball in the Zach Taylor era back in 2019. And once he

00:43became an established starter and the rest of the defense formed around him in 2021, we saw the

00:47good parts of Pratt as a player. And he was good enough in that season. And in 2022, he made so

00:52many game-defining and game-winning plays in those two years that he earned a second contract worth

00:58$20 million in 2023. But what happened to Pratt, and this is definitely not exclusive to him,

01:02we see it all over the league, he got older and older and his abilities just started to decline.

01:06And this was definitely noticeable in the 2023 and 2024 seasons. We all knew this release was coming.

01:12He was just not the same player that he was when he signed that second contract back in 2023.

01:16And when the team moved on from Manorumo, even if they did hire Pratt's former linebacker coach

01:20and Al Golden, we did kind of sense that the change in guard and the change in leadership for the

01:24entire defensive side of the ball, it did mean the end of Pratt's time here in Cincinnati.

01:28But the question on everyone's mind about this release is why did it take so long? The simplest

01:32answer is the Bengals really wanted to trade Pratt and just held onto him for the longest period of

01:37time that they felt comfortable doing so. And in defense of the Bengals here for a quick second,

01:41this is exactly what the Green Bay Packers just did with cornerback Jair Alexander. Now,

01:45Alexander is a much better player and a much more notable name, so it's fair to say that his

01:49trade market was actually more robust compared to the trade market for Jermaine Pratt. But the

01:53Packers were very likely to move on from Alexander or at the very least have him take a pay cut,

01:58which he denied. And just a day before mandatory minicamp began for the Packers, in which Alexander

02:02would have had to show up in order for him to avoid being fined, the Packers just went ahead

02:06and released him. And this was the exact same timeline that we just saw with the Bengals and

02:09Pratt. Because Pratt obviously didn't show up to voluntary workouts, he didn't show up to OTAs,

02:13he knew he wasn't going to be on the team for much longer, and the team knew it as well. So instead of

02:16keeping him around during the week of mandatory minicamp, in which, again, he would have been required to show up,

02:20the Bengals just let him go. Which is definitely better compared to the alternative, in which they could

02:24have kept him on the roster throughout the entire offseason in case some team wanted to trade away

02:28like a seventh-round pick for him. But if it hadn't happened by now in June, it probably wasn't going

02:32to happen in August. So it is better for the team to release in three months before the season begins,

02:36as opposed to maybe three days before the season begins. But again, this probably should have happened

02:40weeks, if not months, prior to this. The Bengals had no issue releasing both Alex Kappa and Sheldon

02:45Rankins before free agency started, and both of those guys landed on their feet in that month.

02:48And maybe by the time that this video is posted, Pratt ended up signing with the Indianapolis Colts

02:52and reunited with Inarumo, or he signed with any other team that needs a linebacker. I don't know.

02:56But if that's not the case, he's kind of out in limbo here, late in the offseason, just hoping that

03:00another team calls him. Long past free agency, when linebackers were making a lot more money than I think

03:04the Bengals were expecting on the opening market. Long past the NFL draft, and a lot of teams found

03:08younger linebackers than him. It's just not ideal for players to get released at this point in the offseason.

03:12And for a guy like Pratt, who had such a successful career, and had so many defining moments with the

03:16Bengals, you would have expected him to be treated a little bit better than this. But it was really

03:20funny when the Packers released Alexander, because I was thinking to myself, why in the world haven't

03:23the Bengals done this with Pratt? This gives them basically no excuse to keep holding on to him,

03:27and then a couple hours later, they released him. So yes, it absolutely should have happened earlier,

03:31but at least it didn't happen during this week, where they could have even fined him for not showing

03:34up to minicamp. At the end of the day, the Jermaine Pratt era in Cincinnati is over, and every single

03:39captain of the Bengals defense from last year is now off the team. All that's left for the Bengals to do

03:43is just figure out the contracts of both Shamar Stewart and Trey Hendrickson, and then they can

03:47officially move past every single problem that they've faced this offseason. But in typical Bengals

03:51fashion, we might have to wait a little bit longer than we should.

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