2024 Offseason News Thread

[ArmyBengal]

Well there’s the Jefferson deal to beat (4 Years).

$35 million per year in new money.
$110m in total guarantees, $89m of that at signing.

Fucking ouch !!!

So how much in trade could we get for both Higgins AND Chase? lol...

[HoosierCat]

No more excuses now.

[AMPHAR]

That JJ deal is great news as it concerns the Bengals and Chase.   Chase is worth every bit of a similar slightly worse or better contract.   Got a couple a months to work on it.  There's no way I'd step on the practice field without significant positives contract talks if I were Chase.

 

 

 

[HoosierCat]

No idea if they get something done before the season starts, but it feels unlikely to me. Not hugely so, but, like 70/30 against. I'm sure the Bengals would prefer to wait until next year, and handing Chase a big bag while Tee is chained up by the tag (and with clearly no shot at a new deal here) would be...awkward.

If they do deal Tee I think the chance of an extension before opening day increases substantially. Otherwise (and I don't think they will deal Tee, just sayin') I might look at December. If all is going well maybe they pull the trigger around Christmas like they did years ago with Palmer.

[AMPHAR]

With JJ deal done and about this time of year we'll start getting some rumblings from the local scribes hinting at what the extension forecast looks like.    At $24m under it would be a negative not to lock up some future players in the summer like they typically do.  

 

 

[ArmyBengal]

With time left on Chase's deal, which I thought was up sooner, would actually benefit the Bengals in locking him up longer.
They already know what he will make this year and under the tag next year.  Just figure that shit out.  Not getting cheaper.

[ArmyBengal]

Plus there are more WR's coming up to an extension as well, with the same intent on resetting the market.
The Bengals already know where they stand with Higgins and need to move forward regardless, IMO.
Love you Tee, but we know how this story ends.  Here you go Chase.  CHI-CHING...

[HoosierCat]

No argument, signing Chase now makes the most sense for both sides. We’ll see how it goes.

[HoosierCat]

And so it begins...

Quote

"League sources indicated Chase signing before this season would likely mean his camp giving up more than a little in the negotiation," The Athletic's Paul Dehner Jr. reported.

Translation: Bengals, Chase not close on money. What money specifically, you ask?

Quote

According to Dehner, the Bengals' negotiations will focus on how much guaranteed money it will take to keep Chase in Cincinnati. Dehner noted that Cincinnati has historically hesitated to offer high guarantees, with the notable exception of last year's five-year extension for quarterback Joe Burrow.

Burrow was offered a guaranteed $219 million, seven times higher than the franchise's previous guarantees record. Would the Bengals consider making a similar exception for Chase, who has established himself as one of the league's best rookies in three NFL seasons?

It's the same old story
Same old song and dance, my friend

-- Aerosmith

 

 

[AMPHAR]

19 hours ago, ArmyBengal said:

With time left on Chase's deal, which I thought was up sooner, would actually benefit the Bengals in locking him up longer.
They already know what he will make this year and under the tag next year.  Just figure that shit out.  Not getting cheaper.

The Bengals and Chase know he's under control for 3 years.  Contract year, Option Year, Tag Year.    Which combined would pay him somewhere in the range of $50m.    He reasonably can say $27m of that is 100% his.  Tag  year is questionable if he were to suffer a decline in performance in the next two years.  

Sign a long term deal before the season and he can more than double that amount of money in the same time period without beating JJs deal. 

That's the leverage point Bengals have.   Chase sitting out this year is a major leverage point for him.    There's no way this team would will want to suffer an public nightmare not appearing to do all they can to win with Burrow after the last few years of image change and at a time they'll probably be asking for $300-$400m of Hamilton county money.

Makes sense for both sides to get it done. 

[ArmyBengal]

Oh yeah, forgot the option year.  Thanks.

Agree this makes sense for both sides.
Higgins and Chase both leaving would be hard for fans to swallow.

[HoosierCat]

Theoretically, the Bengals could hold onto Chase through the 2027 season (so four years counting 2024) for something like $90 million: $30 million for 2024 and 2025, then two tags for circa $60 million. This would be a PR nightmare for the reasons Amphar already noted, plus it would tie up the tag for two years, potentially letting talent at other spots bleed away. Buuuuuut it would be significantly cheaper than a four year extension, which at the current market rate would be around $140 million with $120 million guaranteed.

To be clear I don't expect them to do that, but looking at those numbers I can easily see how the two sides might have very different contract numbers in mind.

[ArmyBengal]

Cooler heads should prevail with this one, but that's a good point Hoosier.

Anyone still thinking it's feasible to extended both Higgins and Chase?
If the Bengals had any interest in doing that, which they may have, the recent contracts have all but extinguished any thought of that happening.  Can't have Burrow, Chase and Higgins eating up that much cap space.

[AMPHAR]

1. With Lions giving a mega deal to Sewell that was the alternate popular choice from that draft.   It just won't play well and it shouldn't play well if the Bengals/Chase hit a rough patch that somehow leads Burrow playing games without Chase for an extended period of time. 

2. Chase/Higgins together forever.   Yes, I still think its feasible and makes perfect roster building sense.  The NFL just got $75m a piece for 2 games from Netflix.   The salary cap is going to continue to grow AND there is cap flexibility considering all of Tee's franchise tag is hitting now and Chase's option year will hit in full.   Burrow's deal is not and won't hit full rate for a few seasons.

 

 

 

 

[ArmyBengal]

Interesting

[AMPHAR]

The counter point to keeping Chase/Higgins will always be the "draft class".    The draft classes for the forseeable future will fill the top 150 picks with plenty of WR prospects that look good running around in T-shirt and shorts at considerable cheaper prices.

However, that doesn't necessarily translate into NFL production because I did a rough count posted it on here that less than 40% of the WR taken in the top 35/40 (can't remember) produce a singular 1,000 yard season.

But fans will always talk themselves into saving that cap room to go sign a Center for goodness sake.

I will always look at it as Burrow is the best back shoulder thrower in the NFL and Higgins excels at that.  Then Chase is just elite as elite gets.    So, in my mind the best way to knock over the Superbowl target is keeping both.  Not to say that's the only way it can happen.

 

 

[AMPHAR]

I will always go back to the Atkins, Dunlap, MJ days.   There were countless posts from Bengals fans proclaiming they could only keep 1 or 2.     Then tons of hot-air downgrading the 2 they thought wouldn't or couldn't be retained.

Long story short.  MJ played 1 season with Tampa but other than that all 3 played their prime years together.   They never won a Superbowl or even a playoff game but they formed some the best Defenses we've ever had and the function of not winning a Superbowl/playoff game can be laid at the feet of lady luck and Dalton/Marvin choking, IMO.

 

[AMPHAR]

Another counter point will be the Chiefs traded Hill and won 2 superbowls.    However, that was not a function of the Chiefs thinking the best way to build a team was not paying WR.   It was influenced by the amount of money and Hill being sort of a loose cannon. 

Secondly - KC has been on the ropes.   The Bengals don't drop 3 linemen by the AFC Champ game then the narrative is flipped by what a colossal mistake it was to trade Hill.   Ravens choking same story.

 

 

[ArmyBengal]

All valid points.  Nothing from me there.

[ArmyBengal]

On a completely side note, see having nothing to do with anything being discussed here.

I stumbled across my old Army footlocker, which I had almost forgotten about.
Found my Super Bowl 16 program and the two tickets from when my dad and I went.
Funny thing I noticed ??  The face value of those tickets was $40 bucks each for lower endzone tickets.

Back then regular fans could attend the Super Bowl without taking out a second mortgage.

[HoosierCat]

The best argument for keeping both Chase and Higgins is to go back and look at how long it took and what it cost to replace Houshmanzadeh.

First they threw his money at Coles, who immediately went to crap.

Then they spent a second round pick on Simpson, who busted, and a fourth on Caldwell, who was meh.

Then, of course, there was Batman.

Finally they spent a third on Sanu. Yay!

So it took two failed FA signings, three draft picks and four years. Everyone is a cinch to replace until they leave. Then we're all singing Joni Mitchell.

 

[HoosierCat]

I feel the need to give our head coach props for his fantastic trolling of the local sports media and terminally online Bengals fans today. Well played, Mr. Taylor, well played indeed.

https://www.wcpo.com/sports/football/bengals/bengals-quarterback-joe-burrow-absent-from-bengals-ota-on-tuesday

[HoosierCat]

For those interested, here's Dehner's take in full. tl;dr - he argues the Bengals will likely wait until next summer to extend Chase, so no deal this year. He expects a deal will get done eventually but it's also possible the Bengals flatly refuse to give guarantees beyond year one to anyone but Burrow. So there's a non-zero chance that it could all blow up.

Quote

With Justin Jefferson’s $35 million per year and $110 million in total guarantees, the wide receiver market didn’t just reset Monday morning, it was redefined.

Nobody benefited more from the new definition than Ja’Marr Chase.

“Hell yeah!” the Bengals receiver said with a laugh back in January when asked if he wanted to wait for Jefferson to sign a contract before doing his own.

He likely woke up spouting the same exclamation Monday.

With a giant contract keeping Jefferson in Minnesota through 2028, all eyes turn toward the Bengals’ approach to keeping their elite receiver with quarterback Joe Burrow.

The original thought was Chase would wait for the Jefferson deal and then, perhaps, top it.

“BREAK THE BANK,” Chase directed to Jefferson on Instagram, more invested than any of his former teammates’ millions of followers.

Did he ever? These deals are often jazzed up to look stronger than they are with fake money, early outs and soft guarantees. Not this. It was clear as day. The previous high mark for money fully guaranteed at signing for a receiver was $52 million for Tyreek Hill in Miami. Jefferson landed $89 million.

League sources said the $35 million average value didn’t come as a shock, but those guarantees were eye-opening.

The conversation can now start for Chase, but questions start being asked as well. Is he worth as much as Jefferson? When does it happen? Is there another move to wait on? Is this structure even possible in Cincinnati?

Money and expectations have changed over the last few months.

The summer of wide receiver deals hit like a waterpark wave pool. Seven extensions averaging at least $23 million per season for the position were signed one after the other. Only five such contracts existed before this year.

The rash of extensions felt like a race. The timing of many was outside of historical norms as was the cash.

All this changed the game. The deadline for WR deals wasn’t the start of the season, training camp or even the franchise tag extension deadline of mid-July. The deadline for teams was to jump into the financial water before the Vikings and Jefferson made the big splash.

Four of the seven highest-paid (AAV) non-quarterbacks are now wide receivers extended this offseason.

NFL, as in life, always follow the money. In doing so, the league sent a clear message: quarterbacks and elite receivers are the two most valuable assets on any team. Once you have those two pieces, you can always find a way to make the rest work well enough to contend for a championship. Nobody knows this better than the Bengals.

It’s easy to say the Bengals should have found a way to get an expected Chase extension done sooner and avoid this hefty market adjustment, but Chase wasn’t going to so much as look in their direction until Jefferson’s last pen stroke dried in Minnesota.

There was no reason. Let his buddy reset the market and assist his success, once more, just like at LSU.

This all fit into the Bengals’ approach to Tee Higgins and general unwillingness at this point to reach the levels he desires and deserves. That decision was complicated and came with Chase in mind.

Chase’s situation didn’t seem nearly as challenging to decipher. He wants to stay with Burrow (he’s stated as much this year), the Bengals want to keep him with their franchise QB and value him as the second-best player on their team. The price tag would be hefty, but so is the value in building around an elite QB-WR connection.

The contract would likely get done sometime in the summer of 2025 because that was when nearly all of these types of contracts had been done – until now. The extensions for 2021 top-10 draft picks Jaylen Waddle and DeVonta Smith came before their fourth seasons. Since the 2011 CBA instituted a rookie wage scale, only one first-round receiver had signed an extension before his fourth season. Only 19 of 288 non-quarterback first-round picks had done the same.

Yet, throw in Lions offensive tackle Penei Sewell and you have three of the seven non-QBs in the top 10 from 2021 inking deals before Year 4. Adios, precedent. Welcome to the new age of the constantly spiking salary cap creating bargains for early extenders.

Could Chase join the precedent-breaking trio? Incidentally, while the Jefferson contract may have officially started the conversations it also shifted the leverage of patience back to the Bengals.

Nobody will touch that Jefferson number anytime soon, with the Cowboys’  CeeDee Lamb the only other major receiver left without a deal. The Bengals have Chase signed through the 2025 season with the fifth-year option next year at $21.9 million. The advantage to Chase signing now would be to lock in his guarantees before risking injury this year.

The Bengals can now sit back and play the long game to next summer.

Remember, Cincinnati did this with A.J. Green. He signed his extension on the day the team flew to Oakland for the season opener of his fifth-year option season in 2015.

Last offseason, they worked on a Burrow extension and didn’t finish it until the Chiefs and Lions kicked off for the opener.

Playing out the timeline fits the Bengals’ DNA as much as setting a value and refusing to move from it. League sources indicated Chase signing before this season would likely mean his camp giving up more than a little in the negotiation.

Such isn’t to say the future of Burrow and Chase together is suddenly jeopardized. Hardly. They are the heartbeat of the Bengals’ championship dreams. Everyone knows this. Eventually, the deal should get done.

The concern won’t be in the cost reaching near (or exceeding) $35 million per year, but what to make of those guarantees. The Bengals have notoriously never given high guarantees before Burrow. He was the exception. You can get away with that with a franchise-altering QB.

Going back and breaking their rules on guarantees with Chase would be the real problem. It could open Pandora’s Box for every great Bengals player to claim they deserve the big guaranteed money as well. Perhaps an argument could be made in viewing Burrow-Chase as a packaged exception to the rule from Day 1.

Yet, nobody would be surprised to see Bengals executive vice president Katie Blackburn and the family take a hard line on the guaranteed money with Chase and create the largest obstacle.

It’s probably the one thing they can’t do with the Chase contract if they plan to continue doing business as they have for generations. Certainly, as it relates to the outlier of the Jefferson template.

There are creative ways around it, the Bengals have a lifetime of contracts to point at as examples. This will require the same.

The question to answer inside of the guarantees conversation is whether Chase deserves to equal Jefferson’s record-breaking deal.

Jefferson’s deal reached new heights because his production dictated it — and Minnesota had nobody else to pay upon ditching Kurt Cousins for rookie J.J. McCarthy. Jefferson posted the most receiving yards through four seasons in NFL history (5,899), clearing second-place Michael Thomas by 377 yards.

Chase has 3,712 yards through his first three seasons and is unlikely to catch him. If looking at receiving yards per game through the first four seasons by players with at least 3,500 yards, you end up with this list.

Of course, there could be one more season of data points to reference should this negotiation stretch into 2025. The Bengals brought in Justin Rascati from Minnesota as passing game coordinator under new offensive coordinator Dan Pitcher. There will be designs to find new methods of utilizing Chase in the same ways the Vikings featured Jefferson.

There’s still room for Chase — and his value — to grow in Cincinnati.

After Monday, the cost of doing elite receiver business in the NFL grew substantially. The next phase of Negotiating with the Stars can officially begin in Cincinnati.

 

[HoosierCat]

Another day, another WR wants a bag.

Quote

San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk is skipping mandatory minicamp in search of a new contract.

NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport reported that Aiyuk did not show up for the start of minicamp on Tuesday, per sources informed of the situation.

The 26-year-old wideout is due $14.124 million in the final year of his rookie contract. Coming off a season in which he was named second-team All-Pro with a career-high 1,342 yards, Aiyuk is in line for an increase that better aligns with the top of the market, which currently has four players above the $30 million-per-year new-money mark and eight over the $25 million plateau. Justin Jefferson reset the market on Monday with a four-year, $140 million extension.

https://www.nfl.com/news/49ers-wr-brandon-aiyuk-not-present-at-mandatory-minicamp-amid-search-for-new-contract

 

[AMPHAR]

On 6/4/2024 at 12:53 PM, HoosierCat said:

The best argument for keeping both Chase and Higgins is to go back and look at how long it took and what it cost to replace Houshmanzadeh.

First they threw his money at Coles, who immediately went to crap.

Then they spent a second round pick on Simpson, who busted, and a fourth on Caldwell, who was meh.

Then, of course, there was Batman.

Finally they spent a third on Sanu. Yay!

So it took two failed FA signings, three draft picks and four years. Everyone is a cinch to replace until they leave. Then we're all singing Joni Mitchell.

 

Yeah.   People can go back and forth all day long about whether or not Higgins is elite/No. 1 or not.   Bottomline whatever Higgins is or isn't on his own don't matter.   You know Higgins with Burrow/Chase is elite.

I never view it as positional thing.  Its a matter of having something that works very well so keep it.    Its a zero sum game, IMO.   At somepoint they'll have to find a diamond in the rough to fill a number of spots once the franchise talents get their market contracts.