It’s set to be a massive offseason for the Cincinnati Bengals. Joe Burrow’s future is secure after he put pen to paper on a long-term contract extension in 2023, but now it’s time for their other stars to get paid.
Ja’Marr Chase led the league in receptions, receiving yards and touchdown receptions this season, Trey Hendrickson led in sacks and was a finalist for Defensive Player of the Year, while Tee Higgins had a career-high 10 touchdown receptions in 2024.
If the Bengals are to get back into the playoffs next season, the next few months could prove pivotal. On the latest episode of The Athletic Football Show, Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen discussed what a perfect offseason would look like for Cincinnati.
A partial transcript has been edited for clarity and length. The full episode is available on YouTube below or in “The Athletic Football Show” feed on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Robert: What is your Bengals-centric question as we head into this offseason?
Derrik: How do they fix the defense? Obviously keeping Trey Hendrickson would go a long way there, but they are still so far away. When they fired Lou Anarumo (former Bengals defensive coordinator), he was still a good defensive mind. It’s just that the cupboard was so bare and they ended up so bad that somebody had to fall on the sword and it ended up being him. Just off that alone, them losing a defensive coordinator of that caliber, I’m already a little bit skeptical. But then you look at the depth chart — outside of Hendrickson and maybe if you think that Logan Wilson can play better — they need eight starters probably. I know people are going to bring up Mike Hilton, but Hilton’s a free agent so they just have a lot of guys here where some of their best players are potentially going to move on from them. Sheldon Rankins is also going to be (31).
Robert: I can almost guarantee they’re going to cut Sheldon Rankins.
Derrik: Yeah that’s what I’m saying.
Robert: As I was doing this Sheldon Rankins and Sam Hubbard were just gone when I was doing this exercise.
Derrik: Rankins was the first one I cut (laughs).
Robert: If you do that they get to $70 million pretty quickly, but with that $70 million they have eight holes to fill. Even if you wanted to see this optimistically, you could say, ‘Alright, Daxton Hill looked better at corner before he got hurt.’ So maybe by next year, you can slide Daxton Hill to one of the outside corner spots. Cam Taylor-Britt’s a roller coaster but between him and DJ Turner, can you find solid enough outside cornerback play between those two and Daxton Hill to keep rolling with that? With Jordan Battle coming in and Geno Stone still being there at safety, is that good enough? If you can spend most of the resources on the front seven, can you get this back to a workable place? Even if you’re not a top-10 defense, can you not be a bottom-five defense? I could at least see that argument starting to take shape. But even in that reality, you probably have to replace six of the front seven players on your team in order to get there.
Derrik: And that’s kind of the issue, where do you actually want to start throwing the resources?
Robert: I wanted you to build your own perfect Bengals offseason, so let’s do this. With the $70 million in cap space and their draft capital, what in your mind is the perfect Bengals offseason?
Derrik: The perfect Bengals offseason starts with keeping Tee (Higgins). But that is going to be a significant portion of your money and you’re already going to start to lose there. Tee is going to be a lot of money. You can cut Sheldon Rankins for about $9 million, that gets you to a decent spot. I landed on a number of names to fix the defense. They need to sign two out of these three players; D.J. Jones to fill the interior, Charvarius Ward at corner or Chase Young on the outside. I would probably lean towards the front players truthfully because of their run defense. We talked about this coming into this season and then it didn’t get any better. They were one of the worst run defenses in the league and you saw what they were like without D.J. Reader. They could go get D.J. Jones, even though I know it’s a very unsexy signing for how bad the defense was.
Robert: That’s what we need though. We need unsexy signings for this team.
Derrik: Eat your vegetables, exactly. He would be perfect for them. But it’s obviously not just about the defense. If you look at the roster from top to bottom, I still think their interior offensive line is mostly terrible. They would be behooved to spend their first-round pick on the offensive line to protect Burrow — to make sure that he can do what he needs to do with (Ja’Marr) Chase because this seems to be a very good offensive line class. I know Dane Brugler likes a lot of these guys and even some of the tackles. People are talking about them as if they could move into guard, which is obviously what the Bengals need. So if you could hit on two of those three names on defense, maybe you still have a little bit of money left over to go get any linebacker. Especially if you end up trading Germaine Pratt who asked for a trade. Then go spend your first-round pick on an offensive lineman and then your other six or seven picks on defense.
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(Top photo: Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)
