Imbecilic contract structures overshadow Bengals' solid free agency

We can acknowledge that the Cincinnati Bengals took a more proactive approach to free agency than usual, and that they managed to somehow botch that goodwill all at once.

Many Bengals fans out there — surely not you, dear reader — don't have a single critical thinking brain cell when it comes to how the front office does business. They make apples to oranges comparisons to other teams, lament the so-called "media narratives" about how cheap the Bengals are, and don't take into consideration the bigger, holistic picture.

I get it. Bengals fans are in a perpetual state of emotional precariousness. Zero Super Bowl wins to date. Joe Burrow approaching 30 years old with many injuries and absorbed hits on his ledger. Outlook is not particularly promising.

...And while the organization's public messaging insists the Bengals are all-in every year, that just cannot be further from the truth when you look at the reality of Cincinnati's latest personnel additions.

Bengals front office's capacity to self-sabotage knows no bounds

Big shout out to Joe Goodberry for gathering all this information, which I'll do my best to explain so it's not too inside baseball/football for the general audience.

The long and short of it: The Bengals can claim they're all-in all they want. The way they do contracts is nonsensical. Here's a separate tweet/X post of Goodberry summarizing the broader picture:

"Yes, the Bengals gave out the two highest 2026 Cap Hits to APY deals. The average 2026 Cap Hit was 51% of the Average Per Year. The other teams that gave out big Year 1 Cap Hits? Raiders, Titans, Cardinals. Because they don't have a QB to pay and had tons of cap space. And it's not like the Bengals are offering less cash in year one. Their year 1 Cash to APY ratio is amongst the highest in the league. They're not saving cash. They're not saving cap. They're just limiting their 2026 team. Again."

For a player like Boye Mafe, who was a rotational edge defender in Seattle, nabbing a front-loaded contract is an easy sell. Mafe can prove he's a quality starter, and use that performance as leverage to negotiate a raise before his current deal expires, or to force a trade.

But here's where we get to why Cincinnati's way of doing business, even as a nice selling point in Mafe's individual case, is so straight-up dumb.

The NFL salary cap is going up at a ridiculous rate every single year. It's gone from $224.8 million in 2023 to $301.2 million this year. Thanks to the new media rights deals and how much business is generally booming in pro football, there's no end in sight as far as how much the cap will continue to rise. Mind you, the likelihood of an 18th regular-season game is very much in play sooner rather than later, too!

So by front-loading the contracts of Mafe, safety Bryan Cook, and defensive tackle Jonathan Allen to such a ridiculous degree, the Bengals limit how much they can spend in the present.

Calling on the power of the boldfaced font for this next bit. It's necessary to invoke in the face of such boldfaced stupidity.

Boye Mafe signed a three-year, $60 million contract. That's $20 million in average annual value/average per year (APY). The Carolina Panthers shelled out $120 million over four years for Jaelan Phillips. That'd be $30 million in AAV/APY. Easy math. The fact that Mafe's. Year 1 cap hit is $17 million and Phillips' is $9.9 million is laugh-out-loud organizational malpractice by the Bengals.

WHAT. ARE. WE. DOING!?!?!?

It cracks me up that Duke Tobin talked about possibly creating "future problems" re: restructuring Joe Burrow's contract.

Guess what, Dukie? You and Katie Blackburn are creating "NOW" problems by hamstringing your ability to maximize the 2026 roster via free agency. You know the salary cap will rise in 2027. It's actually legal to structure your contracts like normal human beings, and let some of the money trickle into the future, where, by the way, you have a projected $99.8 million of cap room to work with next year.

Perhaps most humorous of all, is that in spite of these *unconventional* tactics, the Bengals still have over $30 million to sign, say, Bobby Wagner to solidify the linebacker corps.

Will the Bengals do this? Or will they leave lots of cap on the table to roll into 2027, where, again, they have almost nine figures worth of money to play with? I have a hunch where they're leaning.