Im glad to have these guys back, but I really dont know if we did the right thing here. Without knowing fully how Warrick is doing, I cant comment too, too much on TJ since we potentially needed another WR option, but we really used a lot of cap space here.
Our tagging of Rudi is going to cost us over $6 million and I dont the exact cap hit for the TJ move, but Ive read its front heavy and this first year may cost us $5 million. Thats over $11 million on 2 players that we potentially have quality backups for.
We did need another WR but if we hadnt been pursuing these 2 players, we could have made more of a move for Mason, even though I think we couldnt have really gotten him as the Pats apparently made a better offer than the Ravens but his wife wanted to live in the BAL area. We at least could have made a play for Burress or Muhammed, or some of these other WRs who are on the trading block (Coles, S. Moss, Gardner) and hell, even Az Hakim, Juravicious (I butchered that I think), Joey Galloway and many others are out there.
TJ did well for us last year, but I really think we could have found an equally talented WR for cheaper, or we should have made a move for a more talented that we could have found at the price we are paying him or slightly more.
Obviously Rudi has done us very well here, but is he really worth the $6.3 million or so that we are now paying him? Yes we havent seen Perry in action, but Marvin has had nothing but great things to say about him. To me, if you are so high on Perry, are already paying him 1st rd dollars, and have other needs, why not give him the chance, like we did w/ Palmer. Perry can bring many aspects to our offense that Rudi cannot, and I think once we are able to get him comfortable, we would be a better team b/c of it. Yes it would be hard to just get rid of Rudi, but why not do a sign and trade and try and help ourselves elsewhere?
Im sure that TB, MIA or ARI would be more than happy to give up some defensive players, picks or whatever else to get Rudi's services.
B/c of these signing we really dont have much left to get into the FA market. This year there are some very, very good defensive players available, not to mention the quality of the offensive linemen out there who could provide us w/ some upgrades and depth (not that our line isnt good, but we have some guys who are getting up there, and you can never have too much depth on the line). We obviously have a huge need on the d-line, and it appears we dont have the cap money to get the top guys and as signing have already occured in DAL and MIN, its only going to drive the remaining DE/DTs value up. This leaves us w/ either acquiring a mediocore player, or trying to fill the need through the draft, which isnt exactly the most talented for the d-line.
Additionally, as stated in a previous thread, an upgrade at TE would be very nice. Pollard is now available via FA, and I would love to have him and his pass catching skills for a few years, but I doubt we will be able to even make a play for him. I feel as if we have really painted ourselves in a corner here.
We also could have used a veteran LB in my opinion, as Hardy hasnt been exactly what we had been hoping for, Wayne may now have some injury issues, and our other guys are just very young (minus Simmons of course who also had some injury issues last year).
If we didnt sign TJ or Rudi, I really believe we would have been able to make our team even stronger. We could have made some major moves w/ that $11 million to focus on the defensive side of the ball, and still been able to get a WR in my opinion, of equal or better value, while still having Warrick and Washington.
I know Marvin is a defensive mastermind, but he needs to help himself out a bit, instead of moulding all these younger/raw players.
It looks like you're right about TJ the first year is worth about $5mil but is pretty cap friendly after that. Also if Rudi signs to a long term deal that will help the cap.
Warrick has had some good games but was injured most of last year and that's always a concern. So TJ seems like a good signing in my eye. Actually TJ's cap numbers are much better than some of the WRs going early and if you wait to see what's left over all you might be left with is the bag.
Rudi is a good RB and has proved that. With Perry you're really not sure. IMO I think Rudi is a much better back. Rudi could extend his contract and much it more cap friendly to help out. Even if that doesn't happen the other teams will run out of money at some point and some guys will come a lot cheaper for the talent they have.
I always believe keeping your own and then working the FA market is the best way to go, if possible.
Flux, i think the key is winning and not seeing perry in game action. Signing TJ was not the greatest move in my mind, but it gives Palmer a comfort zone to continue to succeed. Plus he took less money to stay in Cincy, which speaks volumes about how 'nati has changed with marvin in charge. I think tagging Rudi was the only feasible move until Perry gets some game experience. Look for Perry to get more action this year as the team evaluates whether he can handle the load. My guess is he can't and they end up signing Rudi long term.
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We are allowed to spend $5.24 million for our rookies, so that leaves us w/ less that $4 million, which equates to about 1 FA signing.
chaindog35 wrote:Flux, i think the key is winning and not seeing perry in game action. Signing TJ was not the greatest move in my mind, but it gives Palmer a comfort zone to continue to succeed. Plus he took less money to stay in Cincy, which speaks volumes about how 'nati has changed with marvin in charge. I think tagging Rudi was the only feasible move until Perry gets some game experience. Look for Perry to get more action this year as the team evaluates whether he can handle the load. My guess is he can't and they end up signing Rudi long term.
I definitely understand that tagging Rudi was about the only thing we could do since Perry was hurt last year. It was the smart thing to do, but I just feel like we are limiting ourselves with tying up all that money in a player that Marvin would rather substitute Perry in for. Our hands are definitely tied since Perry has shown us nothing, but our problem last year wasnt on the offensive side of the ball, and now we wont really be able to address the defensive side.
It could potentially be fatal to the team had we handed everything over to Perry w/o a quality backup, but if we knew this ahead of time, we could have tried to sign a Rhodes or a Buckhalter or A-Train or Blaylock or another cheaper RB w/ experience. I mean having Kitna as the backup last year, definitely made it easier to let Palmer take over and we would have had to address that
Are we really going to be able to win more games w/ Rudi and TJ in there instead of Perry, Warrick, and a much better defense? I honestly dont know, and if we were to go w/ the latter route, we would be setting ourselves up better for further down the road.
I know we didnt have much of a choice here without putting a ton of faith in Perry, but I really, really, really, REALLY wanted to improve our defense, and its looking like we wont be able to
i dunno, i'm stoked man. while i see your points, i think you're a bit too idealistic. we've maintained a core of players that have the potential to grow together and that stuff doesn't show up on the stat sheet. something is finally clicking here and i'm gald we've made an effort to stick to that and see how it develops.
now it seems that we have enough cap room for a nice fa d signing, and if that went down i'm gatherin' y'all up to build a bronze statue of marv.
i'm not too worried about the te. at worst, perry will be around to catch some balls out of the backfield and warrick is a great short yardage/possession reciever (if he's 100% as i'm hearing).
plus we can fill in some gaps in the draft... btw, what they hell are we looking for in the draft now? what are our weak spots on d?
We are allowed to spend $5.24 million for our rookies, so that leaves us w/ less that $4 million, which equates to about 1 FA signing.
That rookie salary pool is from last year. Not relavant for this year. I do understand your point though. At the same time it's no different for any other team close to the cap at this stage of the game. Besides that rookie pool doesn't have to figured in until somewhere around May or at least after the draft. There is time to play with contracts or cuts to make room.
Excellent points you've brought up Flux I think we can look optomistically at the team, even with the same roster as last year, considering the youth at defense that you'd expect to only get better. But, i've had a similar outlook to it all; similar to what you brought up. I like TJ, and was very impressed with his toughness last season, but also believe Chad's attention inflated his numbers a bit. I think seeing Warrick have a huge year opposite Chad the year before last, and then TJ's year last season indicates that being across from CJ is a good situation to be in. Rudi had a ton of ydg, but also a ton of carries to get that yardage. He struggled during the first half of the season and started really putting together some impressive numbers the second half. I don't think it is coincidence that he started looking better when Carson started making defenses respect our passing attack. Like TJ's "across from CJ situation", the RB position for the Bengals, will be a good situation to shine in. I'm not trying to be a conspiracy theorist or anything, but I think there is a legitimate possibility of trading Rudi. If you didn't know, Anthony Thomas was in Cincinnati all day yesterday for a visit. That leads me to believe that there could be something brewing. There's no way Thomas would play here with Rudi and Perry still on the team. (2 michigan backs on our team ?) Ridding ourselves from paying Rudi's 6 million dollar contract and getting rid of PW's contract has to be in their minds to some extent. I don't know what's going to happen, but there could be some big things coming. Rumors are flying around everywhere regarding this team. I guess we'll have to wait and see ...In Marvin We Trust
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by Flux » Thu Mar 03, 2005 1:16 pm 
I think we can look optomistically at the team, even with the same roster as last year, considering the youth at defense that you'd expect to only get better. But, i've had a similar outlook to it all; similar to what you brought up. I like TJ, and was very impressed with his toughness last season, but also believe Chad's attention inflated his numbers a bit. I think seeing Warrick have a huge year opposite Chad the year before last, and then TJ's year last season indicates that being across from CJ is a good situation to be in. Rudi had a ton of ydg, but also a ton of carries to get that yardage. He struggled during the first half of the season and started really putting together some impressive numbers the second half. I don't think it is coincidence that he started looking better when Carson started making defenses respect our passing attack. Like TJ's "across from CJ situation", the RB position for the Bengals, will be a good situation to shine in. I'm not trying to be a conspiracy theorist or anything, but I think there is a legitimate possibility of trading Rudi. If you didn't know, Anthony Thomas was in Cincinnati all day yesterday for a visit. That leads me to believe that there could be something brewing. There's no way Thomas would play here with Rudi and Perry still on the team. (2 michigan backs on our team 
?) Ridding ourselves from paying Rudi's 6 million dollar contract and getting rid of PW's contract has to be in their minds to some extent. I don't know what's going to happen, but there could be some big things coming. Rumors are flying around everywhere regarding this team. I guess we'll have to wait and see 
