Well I’m not going to sugar coat it… it ain’t good. Mike Evans is going to make $26 million per year for the next 2 years (about 3 more than expected). That means Higgins is probably going to cost $21 million per year and Chase is a wild card but you know it’s going to be well over 30 (possibly up to $35 million).
With this news, I’m pretty dang sure that Duke Tobin is probably going to trade him over the next couple weeks. I’m certainly not happy about it but keeping both of them for close to $60 million per year seems insane!
Let me know what your thoughts on this are in the comments!
14 comments
Or we just let Higgins play on the tag🤷
Mikes guaranteed portion is actually only $20 mil a year. It has like $6 mil a year in incentives. All around not a market resetting contract at all and good news for us tbh
Tag him and look next year I like Tee but we can find another guy just like him in the draft or free agency cheaper. Guys like Bates are harder to come by we shouldn’t have let that play out the way they did but they obviously saw talent and value in Hill
It means we cant afford tee long-term. Crazy money for a receiver in year 10 and 11. The Franchise tag on Tee suddenly looks like a great deal.
I don’t think that it would be considered ‘nothing’ if the team brings home Lombardi.
Put it this way: in the middle of the season we are always talking about wanting the team to go “all in” by giving up draft capital to acquire someone who can get them over the hump. Letting Higgins play out his tag year is the exact same thing as if the team went out and traded an early pick for a rental Higgins.
If the price is right, I could see moving on from him. But if the team wants to win a championship, at some point they’re going to have to maximize short term returns and deal with the bill later. The best version of the Bengals in 2024 is with Higgins playing on the team. If the team wants to win the Super Bowl before even more hard financial decisions are going to be made, then squeezing the last year out of Higgins is aggressively pursuing Lombardi now.
Higgins will play on the tag, Chase will get his extension the day after Justin Jefferson gets paid.
I predict that the WR position payscale will start to decline as the RB market pay did few years back, as there is an influx of WR talent from the draft every year. Studs like Jefferson and Chase will always get their money though.
If we can trade Tee and get value, I’m all for it. We could likely get Calvin Ridley for half the price and use that cash to upgrade elsewhere.
Give it up – tee is not signing here long term. Did we watch the same defense last year? Do we want to continue with a sub-par o-line? (Average at best) Money NEEDS to go elsewhere. A lot of fans really struggle to look at decisions without letting emotions get in the way.
The benefit of having an elite quarterback is that he doesn’t need a handful of top tier playmakers to win. Look who PM just won with.
IMO I don’t think it means much. I don’t think Evans was ever getting more than 2 guaranteed years anywhere but Tampa was willing to give him good money. This year FA is pretty deep with RBs and mid tier WRs and teams contending that aren’t Tampa weren’t going to pay Evans. The ravens will go get old receivers for example.
I don’t think this signing told us anything new
The second they decided they were letting bates go they should’ve just signed tee. It would’ve been good value but now we’d be dumb to sign him long term
Tag and trade. Two #1 WRs is a luxury we can’t afford when we can’t keep our franchise QB healthy and upright, we have trouble running the football and we can’t stop any of the other teams in our division from running the football at will.
Prioritize the trenches and we will go back to the big game and take it all
Evans is WR1. Tee is WR2 on this team. Why do we keep talking about this?
“But we’ll be twice as successful with two WR1 caliber receivers!”
Oh yeah? KC didn’t even have what would be considered a WR2 on their entire team this year. They also got rid of their WR1 a few years ago (which their fans hated) and used that money to win 2 SBs (which their fans loved more than hating Hill leaving).
Their front office thinks with their brain, not their heart.
I want a great TEAM, not a small amount of great players.
A great team can fight through the injuries of their top players.
Let’s get something for him from a team that needs a WR1 while we have the chance.
It tells us nothing new. The issue isn’t the money it’s the guaranteed money. Reports say David Mulugheta and Tee are asking for guarantees in at least the second year of any contract and possibly in year three. Historically that is not how the Bengals do business. So any of these extensions or FA contracts really don’t tell us anything until the Bengals show they are willing to change how they do business. If they’re not, then there’s no signing Tee Higgins. Mulugheta likes contracts to have guarantees past year one.