HoosierCat

As long as we’re talking rehab... https://www.bengals.com/news/uzomah-s-not-so-trivial-pursuit-on-rehab-trail-with-burrow-and-hopkins

Yup. Florio didn’t say anything we haven’t known for decades. That said, it’s not really their biggest challenge anymore. The last CBA with its rookie wage scale and spending minimum, and the skyrocketing nature of the cap in recent years have combined to make the kind of financial shenanigans other teams used to use to outfox the FO less attractive. And it should be noted that one important legacy of the Lewis era was that he got them out of the habit of allowing themselves to be used to negotiate deals for players with other teams. The cycle of “player comes to town, gets lowball offer, flies to next team and signs with them after they throw on a bs extra year to jack up the value announced in the media” used to be depressingly regular. Now that’s mostly gone. No, the challenge now (and we all know this) is far less about how much they spend, and far more about how they spend it. Which is why I’ll be watching the OL come free agency, to see if they’ve extracted their collective head from their collective ass.

Sadly no.

Kiper’s latest: 1 Lawrence 2 Falcons trade up for Wilson 3 DaVonta Smith 4 Kyle Pitts 5 Sewell https://www.espn.com/nfl/draft2021/insider/story/_/id/30957145/nfl-mock-draft-2021-mel-kiper-new-predictions-all-32-first-round-picks-including-mac-jones-trey-lance-three-trades (Note: paywalled)

That’s a real hard number to justify IMO. Watt has one good year since 2015, 2018 when he had 16 sacks and 25 qb hits. In 2016-2017 and 2019-2020 he appeared in 32 out of 54 games, only played a full season last year and had just 10.5 sacks https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/W/WattJ.00.htm If you think you can get a 2018 out of him, he’d be worth it, but that seems like a pretty big roll of the dice.

Hahahahaha.

Interesting to know. Since I’m not in town any more I don’t pay much attention to season ticket package details and the like. That it’s underwhelming doesn’t surprise me. BTW if you want offers on kitchen appliances, buy something from Williams Sonoma online. Snail mail, email, texts, it never ends!

Sadly no, the Bengals aren’t getting a Disney+ Marvel crossover series, just a couple puff pieces on the .com outlining the “vision” of Elizabeth Blackburn for the team. So who is (as she’s apparently known) “Burnie”? Two professions that just scream “knows how to build a football team,” amirite? BUT to be fair she does already have a league-wide legacy: Writing computer programs to allow ownership to maximize value in player negotiations! A chip off ol’ Mike Brown block! Anyhow, if you’re into pablum and corporate marketing speak, read on: https://www.bengals.com/news/chapter-2-the-vision-high-standards-connection-and-enduring-legacy

Rapien is not just an idiot, he might be the biggest idiot in all of Bengals related media.

As the article noted he was set to be cleared for action in March so they should get a good idea in the next few weeks. I’m really not concerned about the money. Cutting him doesn’t actually get you all that much. There would still be a million in dead money on the books and it would cost another 600k to replace him with a vet minimum, so you only really free up about 4.5m. And at 37m (at least) in space right now the Bengals aren’t in desperate need of room.

1 he just turned 28 last month. 2 https://www.cincinnati.com/story/sports/nfl/bengals/2020/12/08/bengals-te-c-j-uzomahs-rehab-torn-achilles-going-really-well/6483658002/

Given that giant dead money hit and now having extra picks, you have to think Philly being the one to move up to 3 is getting close to a lock. https://www.nfl.com/news/carson-wentz-trade-philadelphia-eagles-indianapolis-colts

Yup.

If by “such decisions” you mean cutting a guy who was clearly a big part of the 2020 plan, had nearly 90 yards and TD in less than two full games and wouldn’t free up a major amount of cap space, I’d say no, most teams don’t cut their own throats like that. But of course this is Cincy, so...