As has been the pattern for the past three years, the Cincinnati Bengals have been quite active in free agency—something that in the recent past would have been astonishing. Mike Brown is one of the most conservative owners in the league, historically, especially when it comes to free agency, and it’s almost never due to a lack of salary cap space.
Perhaps because there was a sense of growing a winning team, though, that spending has now become commonplace, even while they prepare for an inevitably massive contract for Joe Burrow in another year or two. And recently, they made some room by finally pulling the plug on their biggest free-agent mistake.