00:00Let's be honest here. We've got to talk Bengals, and we've got to start with the news that broke yesterday,
00:05and it is very, very simple.
00:08Joe Burrow and the Bengals, well, they've made a lot of big moves this offseason, but I'm not sure there
00:13was one bigger or more surprising than what they did for the first time in team history on Tuesday,
00:21and that's restructuring Joe Burrow's contract, and it's one of those things that I thought, and you're like, oh, yeah,
00:30James Rippey's talked about that plenty.
00:31Yeah, we have. We've talked about it a ton here, whether it's on first word, whether it's among the Bengals
00:36fan base over the past couple of years.
00:37Ever since he signed that contract extension in 2023, it's when will the Bengals restructure Joe Burrow's contract?
00:43When will they use that lever to create cap space to maximize their roster?
00:48Well, they did it yesterday, and it's one of the many, many moves that they've done this offseason to try
00:55to get back into Super Bowl contention.
00:58And Duke Tobin, the Bengals director of player personnel, he got laughed at in February.
01:02Let's be honest. He got laughed at at the Combine when he was asked about going all-in following an
01:08offseason where they added T.J. Slayton and Oren Burks as their big free agent additions
01:14following a disappointing 6-11-2025 campaign.
01:19The idea of going all-in in this comment, well, it did appear laughable.
01:25So the questions on whether we're all-in or not, I've been doing this a long time.
01:30I've never not been all-in. We are all-in.
01:34We are trying to get the best team possible with the resources we have.
01:39You know, last year we went all-in. We signed over $400 million worth of contracts going all-in.
01:46That's what we do. We want to be all-in.
01:49We're trying to put the best roster together every year, and this year is no different.
01:54The Bengals want to be all-in. They're always all-in.
01:58Duke said that, and guess what? Everybody laughed.
02:00I rolled my eyes.
02:01The idea that the Bengals were all-in last year, well, it's just not the case.
02:06It's not true. They weren't all-in.
02:08They could say it, and yeah, they paid T, and they paid Jamar, and that was great.
02:11That wasn't all-in.
02:13This is all-in.
02:15Everything that they've done over the past five months,
02:18from re-signing Dalton Reisner long before the Combine even ended.
02:23They agreed to that deal while most of the Bengals brass was in Indianapolis for the Combine.
02:29They signed it on March 1st, long before free agency started.
02:32Free agency opens, they sign the top safety in Brian Cook.
02:35They go get Boye Mafe, a pass rusher that's promising that should help them right away,
02:40and then they go another step and get a former Pro Bowl defensive tackle that should bolster their interior pass
02:46rush.
02:47They weren't done there.
02:48And yeah, they probably felt like at some point in that range that they were done,
02:51and that that was going to be it until Dexter Lawrence became available.
02:55Once that happened, they said, you know what?
02:57We're going to make the splash.
02:59We're going to go all-in.
03:00We're going to make that big move that in the past we haven't made,
03:03that guys like Andrew Whitworth in the past have mentioned.
03:06Going all-in, making that move does wonders for the locker room.
03:11And we've seen that.
03:12From Joe Burrow's comments to just the energy around the building,
03:16to what Orlando Brown Jr. and Ted Karras said last week on this show,
03:21the Bengals made that all-in move for Dexter Lawrence,
03:24and it changed how we view them.
03:26It changed how we viewed the defense.
03:27It changed how we viewed the offseason.
03:29And the one box that they hadn't checked, after all of those things,
03:32after a draft where they add Cassius Howe and Takario Davis,
03:35two guys that should be able to help,
03:36they bolster their offensive line, they go get Dexter Lawrence,
03:39they do all of these things,
03:41the last thing was restructuring Joe Burrow's contract.
03:45And that's exactly what they did on Tuesday.
03:48So I don't know how many games the Bengals are going to win this year.
03:51They should be really good.
03:52They should be a Super Bowl contender.
03:54What I do know is this is what all-in looks like.
03:58This is what all-in feels like.
04:00And the Bengals, we can say it.
04:02All-in on 2026 and winning a Super Bowl this season
04:07following Joe Burrow's contract restructure.
04:10Here's one more.
04:11Duke Tobin on restructuring Joe Burrow's contract.
04:15He was asked about it after the draft in April.
04:18Have you approached Joe Burrow about a restructure?
04:21Is that something you would do?
04:22Oh, those are things that we're working through after the draft.
04:26And, again, we've layered in challenges, but we're up to them.
04:29And we do it because we got the opportunity to add the right people
04:35and the right players.
04:37And those are challenges that the locker room isn't interested in.
04:43They're interested in having the best team possible.
04:45And that's what we're trying to give them is the best team possible.
04:49They want to field the best team possible, and I think that's what's interesting now
04:53is the fact that they free up $10 million.
04:55They restructure Joe Burrow's contract.
04:57They give themselves cap flexibility.
05:00His number, his cap number, drops to $38 million from $48 million this season.
05:05And it's much more reasonable to think, all right, well, this extension is going to get done
05:11or this player could be signed.
05:13The path to adding to the roster or keeping promising young players that are on the roster
05:18became that much simpler.
05:21Let's dive in to this a bit more.
05:23Joe Burrow's contract restructure is certainly something that I did not have on my bingo card yesterday.
05:29And when I saw it, I was like, oh, full disclosure, I got the Cassius Howell news ahead of time.
05:34I didn't have the Joe Burrow news.
05:36And so when I saw that, I was like, oh, my, they're really restructuring on June 9th Joe Burrow's contract.
05:43Yeah, and this was really a non-starter for me in declaring them all in for this season
05:48if they didn't get this done.
05:49And adding Dexter Lawrence and adding Boy Moffey and adding Brian Cook, all of that is awesome
05:53and is certainly a huge step forward from what the Bengals have done in the offseason the last few years.
05:58But every other major quarterback extension was restructured months ago in the NFL.
06:04Dak Prescott, Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, every single one on or close to the level of Joe Burrow
06:10that is trying to compete for a championship this year was restructured months ago.
06:13And obviously I think a lot of us wanted Joe Burrow restructured months ago,
06:17but certainly not going to complain now.
06:20It's great that the Bengals took this step.
06:21And this is really the last thing that I needed to see in order for them to be considered all
06:27in.
06:27Would I still like for them to add?
06:28Absolutely.
06:29Does this open the door for extensions?
06:31For sure.
06:31But this is such a huge step for this organization to truly take a swing at winning a championship.
06:38Huge step.
06:38First time they've done anything like this in a contract restructure.
06:41And to your point, we've been talking about this for months, thought this might have happened a month or two,
06:46but at least it finally did happen.
06:47The one part that surprised me, you brought up those other quarterbacks.
06:50And just looking at the numbers, Burrow freed up about $10 million in cap space.
06:54I thought that was on a little bit of the low end, but Mahomes and Allen were right around there,
06:59freeing up about $11 million and $12 million.
07:01But it's the Lamar and the Dak ones that really stood out where they freed up each over about $30
07:06million.
07:06I thought the Bengals might have been closer to that number just given the amount of contracts and extensions
07:10that we're hoping to see come through.
07:12Yeah, and they could have restructured up the $19 million with where his contract was at.
07:18They go about halfway there.
07:20But man, oh man.
07:21I mean, we're talking about a Joe Burrow restructure.
07:23And I think it means a couple of – one, let's just start here.
07:28The Bengals aren't doing this just to be more cap friendly.
07:32Like, we know the Bengals well.
07:34Like, it's very well.
07:35They're not going to say, all right, let's do something we've never done just to stand pat
07:41and just to be comfortable with where we're at from a cap standpoint.
07:44So something else is coming.
07:45There is another move that's going to drop.
07:48We can debate and discuss what it is and predict what it is, and we have time for that.
07:52But something else is definitely coming.
07:53And it's not the Cassius Howell signing.
07:55I saw the order of those tweets.
07:57Some people –
07:58Cassius was done for like three hours.
08:00Yeah, yeah, yeah.
08:00But I just saw a lot of people making that assumption that maybe the Bengals needed this cap space
08:05in order to sign Cassius Howell, and that just couldn't be further from the case.
08:08Two unassociated moves that just happened to happen in the same afternoon.
08:12But I think the first question here when they came in about halfway to that possible maximum
08:16restructure to Burrow was, is it enough for them to really take a big swing to add to this team?
08:21I think it definitely makes extensions more likely.
08:24But I think partially in my mind if they were going to go make some kind of addition,
08:27maybe they do get closer to that maximum.
08:30But either way, even if it does make extensions more likely, a huge, huge win for the Bengals.
08:35Yeah, it'll be interesting to see just kind of how the chips fall here.
08:37Is it an extension?
08:38Is it going out and adding another piece?
08:40I know we talked about the linebacker room yesterday with Ben Baby,
08:43and we'll have more of that talk later on this week too.
08:45But I just – I would love to be, you know, a fly on the wall in some of those
08:49meetings
08:50of why was the restructure done now and what is the intended, you know, move post this restructure.
08:56Yeah.
08:56Maybe they're close on DJ Turner.
08:57That'd be nice.
08:59Maybe agent zero is going to get a couple zeros out into that contract of his.
Comments