Bengals beat writers Paul Dehner Jr. and Jim Owczarski discuss the team's 2018 free agent class. The Enquirer/Kareem Elgazzar
The latest round of compensatory picks were issued Friday and yet again the Bengals found themselves near the top of the crop for accumulating value. The league awarded them the maximum four selections as compensation for free agent losses sustained last season.
They received an extra third-round pick for Kevin Zeitler (Cleveland), fifth for Andrew Whitworth (LA Rams) and two sevenths for Karlos Dansby (Arizona) and Margus Hunt (Indianapolis).
They were one of four teams to receive the maximum four extra selections (Dallas, Green Bay, Oakland).
They have a total of 11 picks in this year’s draft, after adding a seventh in a trade with New England for linebacker Marquis Flowers and losing one in the trade with Jacksonville for defensive lineman Chris Smith.
The eyes of the football world are focused on Indianapolis for the 2018 NFL Scouting Combine. The week-long event helps teams prepare for the NFL Draft. Here is a look at how the Combine began and what prospects do while they are there. The Enquirer/Michael Nyerges
If they were to use all 11 selections this year, it will mark the most picks in a two-year span by the Bengals since the draft contracted to seven rounds.
"We’ve paid attention to that formula in recent history," Bengals director of player personnel Duke Tobin said. "It’s a meaningful thing. There are teams that pay attention to it, but honestly every year there’s more teams that start closely monitoring it."
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Cincinnati took on criticism last free agency period as Whitworth and Zeitler both signed megadeals and the Bengals offensive line sputtered turning the keys over to younger alternatives in their absence.
The flip side of those departures continues to add up as they focus the primary piece of roster construction on drafting and developing. And that means attempting to acquire as many cracks at the draft as possible.
In that area, at least, nobody in the NFL has been better over the last 10 years.
Cincinnati has racked up 93 selections over the past 10 seasons, most in the NFL. The league average is 79.4 over the span.
Big deal, many will sarcastically counter. They still have no playoff wins to show for it.
Absolutely. That argument will hold water in every discussion until the Bengals overcome it. However, the NFL trend lines prove their strategy to be the significantly higher percentage play.
A few numbers from the 10-year span are revealing:
- Of the top seven teams in total picks, five have made multiple conference championship games and at least one Super Bowl appearance. The other two are the Bengals with six playoff appearances and the Browns with historic, unfathomable flubbing of draft assets.
- There have been four teams to make the Super Bowl multiple times (Seattle, New England, Pittsburgh, Denver) and all land in the top half of total draft selections.
- A total of 13 teams have made multiple appearances in a conference championship game, nine of those land in the top half of the total draft picks.
- The average NFL rank in win percentage of the top eight teams for total picks is 12.8. The average rank of the bottom eight teams is 19.3. The top number is anchored by the outlier Browns, obviously 32nd in win percentage. If you took out Cleveland, the average rank of the top quarter would be 10.0
Total draft selections certainly don’t guarantee success and myriad other factors play into making championship game appearances. In fact, investment in free agency looks to be the NFL trend this year after success seen by Philadelphia, Atlanta and Denver in recent years capitalizing in March on the consistently rising salary cap on the way to a Super Bowl berth.
But a correlation was clear between accumulating draft picks and sustaining success in recent years. That means finding creative ways to add selections as well as being reluctant in giving those away and give into the temptation to move up in the early rounds.
Much fan reaction complains the Bengals aren't aggressive enough in moving up in the first round to draft the game-changer. Tobin doesn't budge on his theory even as the number of picks now pile up at his disposal.
"I view those fourth, fifth, third-round guys as those who can come in and make a meaningful difference in your team," Tobin said. "Those are the picks you end up having to give away to move. The late picks, they are not as valuable and don’t let you move as far, they have some trade value, but the ones that let you move places are your second, your third, your fourth, your fifth, I think we can find guys and come up with guys who can make a meaningful difference in those rounds and we have."
He's not wrong, follow the money to back it up. Of the Bengals current top 13 cap hits next year, 12 are homegrown (only Adam Jones isn't). They are spread across all rounds.
- First: 3 (A.J. Green, Darqueze Dennard, Dre Kirkpatrick)
- Second: 3 (Andy Dalton, Carlos Dunlap, Giovani Bernard)
- Third: 2 (Michael Johnson, Shawn Williams)
- Fourth: 2 (Geno Atkins, Clint Boling)
- Fifth: 1 (George Iloka)
- Undrafted: 1 (Vontaze Burfict)
Keeping picks doesn’t have to be in exchange for spending in free agency, though, in the case of the Bengals it is an influencer.
With AJ McCarron winning his grievance, he'll be in line to sign a significant contract and possibly warrant a third-round compensatory pick for next year. That will add another element to how the Bengals approach free agency this year. It also could add pause to signing an expensive player that could cancel that out.
"It doesn’t mean we are going to be out (on a free agent)," Tobin said. "It means we will wait for the situation to unfold then react to it. We can’t predict where (McCarron) is going to go and what he is going to get, what the future holds for him. We can be in a position to react to it in a positive way. You’ve got to be aware what you are giving up when you make signings, not only the financial component but the comp-pick component."
Comp picks are always a piece of the Bengals puzzle, but they’ve also utilized trading back to acquire extra selections and acquiring late picks that would have been roster cuts in the case of Flowers and the 2019 sixth-rounder they will receive from Dallas in exchange for cornerback Bene Benwikere.
Quarterback play and making good on those picks will play a bigger role than quantity in whether a team makes a run, but the proof is in the numbers in terms of the correlative success seen in the league by the pick accumulation strategy.
JUST IN TIME: The Bengals should feel lucky to have hit on edge rushers Jordan Willis and Carl Lawson in last year’s draft. Trying to replicate the success looks far more challenging this year, at least according to NFL Draft expert Mel Kiper Jr., on his media conference call this week.
“This is a bad, bad year for down defensive ends,” Kiper said.
He went on to point out steals could be found in the later rounds, just as Lawson was in the fourth last year. The club needs to think about the future of the position with Carlos Dunlap entering a contract year along with Michael Johnson. Still, thanks to Willis and Lawson the Bengals won’t be in desperate need at the position in a year where supply is lacking.
FISHER CLEARED: Offensive tackle Jake Fisher saw his season ended early for an irregular heartbeat at the midway point. A scary development, to be sure.
After his offseason surgery, he has been cleared medically to return to the Bengals offseason program, as first reported by the team web site.
Fisher will be in the mix at right tackle with whatever picks and free agents join the team's offensive line re-structuring.
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