The Cincinnati Bengals have had such an incredible offseason that they shouldn't ruin it by signing a mortal-lock Hall of Famer. That's a bridge too far.
Bobby Wagner may still be a very good NFL linebacker with borderline superhuman durability through 14 seasons, but he just turned 36 last month. Any day now he'll be a shell of himself, and the Bengals can't afford to take that risk.
Or at least that's probably how Cincinnati will, in retrospect, frame the decision not to acquire Wagner if Barrett Carter and/or Demetrius Knight Jr. don't ball out in 2026.
Bengals' linebacker position needs help, but is Bobby Wagner the best fit?
If the Bengals' in-house logic is that Carter and Knight will improve thanks to their own personal development and the team's much-improved defensive line, that's great. Fans can buy into that narrative easily enough.
Where the rationale kind of fails itself is when you start to ask the question, "Gee, what if we actually had a proven linebacker at the second level of the defense? What then!?"
The answer is that the ceiling for this entire unit would be higher.
See but Bobby Wagner is apparently too washed up to succeed under those circumstances. He'd be an expensive one-year investment who might not even pay off. Wagner won't sign with anyone unless he's guaranteed to start. Why create the headache of bringing him to the Queen City?
The Bengals had the worst run defense in the NFL last year. Wanna see how Wagner stacked up compared to Knight and Carter in PFF grades in that department?
I'll tell ya. Wagner was fifth-best with a 90.3 run defense grade. Carter and Knight were at 50.0 and 34.4, good for 83rd and 92nd respectively out of 93 qualifiers.
But again...we can't possibly entertain signing Bobby Dub. He's too old, too big of a name to add to the mix of an already star-laden roster, and he's just not worth the cost. Spotrac projects him to carry a $7.6 million price tag. That money could be spent on multiple players when Cincinnati inevitably realizes some of its personnel in training camp aren't up to snuff.
Don't pay any mind to the fact that the Bengals still have north of $16 million in cap room for 2026 and could easily fit Wagner on their books. To reiterate, what if they want to acquire multiple pieces like last year when they scored Noah Fant and Dalton Risner? The latter worked out really well!
Did we restructure Joe Burrow's contract for nothing? Or is there another Dexter Lawrence-esque blockbuster move coming?
That must be it. OK. I'm sold. It's a hard pass on Bobby Wagner, because there's at least a remote possibility that something bigger could be on the horizon.
Channeling Jim Mora "playoffs" vocal inflection, "Maxx Crosby? Maxx Crosby?"
Add us as a preferred source on Google