Running back Joe Mixon took a pay cut to stick with the Bengals in 2023.
He ended up rushing for 1,034 yards with nine touchdowns, marking the fourth time in his seven-year career that he eclipsed 1,000 yards. He also caught 52 passes for 376 yards with three TDs.
But with just one year left on his contract, there’s no guarantee Mixon will be back with Cincinnati in 2024. Bengals director of player personnel Duke Tobin did not want to directly address Mixon’s future when speaking to the media at this year’s scouting combine.
“I can tell you his role this past year was good,” Tobin said on Tuesday. “He had a really good season for us. I was proud of him — over a thousand yards and double-digit touchdowns and it was a big factor for us. In terms of predicting anybody’s role going forward, I’m not going to do that up here on the podium. Those are roster-building strategies and those are things that we’re talking through as this whole thing unfolds with every player on our roster. It’s not specific to just one.
“Really proud of Joe in the season he had. He did a lot of things to help us get into a point where we had a chance. We didn’t get over the hump, but he put us in a position to have a chance.”
Mixon is set to make $2.21 million in base salary in 2024 with a cap hit of $8.85 million. Should the Bengals elect to release Mixon, the club would save $6.1 million in cap space.
In 97 career games, Mixon has 6,412 yards rushing with 49 rushing touchdowns. He’s also caught 283 passes for 2,139 yards with 13 TDs.
If all goes well for the Bengals this year, they won’t have Jake Browning taking any snaps at quarterback but they do want him on hand in the event of an emergency.
They took care of ensuring he’ll be playing for them on Wednesday. The team announced that they have tendered Browning and long snapper Cal Adomitis contracts as exclusive rights free agents.
Neither player will be able to talk to other teams, so the tender ensures they’ll be around when the team gets back to work.
Browning took over as the Bengals starter after Joe Burrow suffered a season-ending right wrist injury. He was 171-of-243 for 1,936 yards, 12 touchdowns, and seven interceptions while starting seven games.
“He did come in and really blossom and give us the opportunity to win and that’s what you want, especially when you’re working with your backup quarterback,” Bengals director of player personnel Duke Tobin said in Indianapolis this week. “You want somebody that can come in and give you the opportunity to win, and he did more than that and we were really impressed with the way that he attacked his role and his leadership when it came down to him being the guy. You could tell he is been in that role before and he was comfortable in that role and we were really impressed with a lot of the things that he did. In terms of keeping him, we plan for him to be with us. Yes.”
Adomitis has played in 32 games for the Bengals the last two years.
Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow is progressing in his rehab from season-ending wrist surgery three months ago.
“As far as I know, it’s going really well,” Bengals director of personnel Duke Tobin said. “He’s been around the building a lot, rehabbing. He’s Joe, so you know that a 100 percent effort is going to go into it. He’s focused on it. All the reports that we’ve gotten have been very positive, so we expect a full recovery and we expect him to continue being Joe.”
Burrow tore the scapholunate ligament in his right wrist, Kelsey Conway of the Cincinnati Enquirer has reported, with a prognosis of 4-6 months of rehab.
Bengals coach Zac Taylor would not put a timeline on when Burrow will begin throwing.
“You know him, like all of the rehab guys, are in our facility there, in our weight room there, with our doctors and our trainers. And so one thing you learn is when you’re around injured players, you won’t ask him every day, ‘How you feel? how you feel?’ That gets pretty old pretty fast,” Taylor said. “And so you give them their space. I know everything’s progressing as expected. And so, as well as anybody over my six years here, I’ve made a lot of errors making proclamations about injury timelines. And so all I can say is that it’s progressing as expected. He’s doing really well. So we’re excited about this offseason with Joe and once we get closer, we’ll have a better idea.”
Burrow passed for 2,309 yards with 15 touchdowns and six interceptions in 10 games last season.
Bengals coach Zac Taylor doesn’t want receiver Tee Higgins going anywhere this offseason.
Taylor said on PFT Live that franchising Higgins was a must for the Bengals, and he isn’t worrying about Higgins leaving because he’s confident the Bengals will prioritize keeping him.
“I wasn’t too stressed about not having Tee next year,” Taylor said. “Internally, when you have those conversations, there wasn’t a whole lot for me to stress about. He’s a huge part of what we do. He works his tail off to put himself in position to be where he’s at. So he needs to be a part of what we’re doing.”
There’s been talk that the Bengals could trade Higgins to a team that has the salary cap space to pay him more, and that the Bengals won’t be able to keep Higgins as well as Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase. But Taylor sounds like he wants to find a way for all three of them to remain in Cincinnati.
A year ago, Bengals director of player personnel Duke Tobin shot down trade rumors regarding Tee Higgins.
“Trading Tee Higgins is not on my mind,” Tobin said at the 2023 Scouting Combine. “That’s their problem. They want a receiver, go find your own.”
At Tuesday’s media session at the combine, Tobin was not as defiant when asked if he had the same message for teams interested in a possible trade for Higgins this offseason.
The Bengals already have announced they are using the franchise tag on Higgins, keeping him off the unrestricted free agent market, but it doesn’t rule out a trade of Higgins.
Tobin didn’t rule it out either.
“The message is: We really like Tee, and we’re a better team with Tee,” Tobin said. “In terms of our intentions going forward, and answering hypotheticals of what could and couldn’t come about, I won’t get into that. But we feel like we’re a better team with him. The reason we franchised him is because we would like to have him. He’s not under contract, and it’s hard for me to predict all the different scenarios that could happen. But we feel strongly about Tee Higgins and his fit with us.”
The Bengals would love to keep Higgins on a long-term deal, but No. 1 receiver Ja’Marr Chase already has made it clear he wants an extension this offseason. He has one year left on his rookie deal, and the Bengals certainly will exercise the fifth-year option on the contract.
Can they afford to keep Higgins long term, too?
“It’s always a priority when you think about premier-type players and how long you want them,” Tobin said. “We work within the confines of the CBA [Collective Bargaining Agreement] like every other team does, and sometimes things come together on a long-term basis; sometimes they don’t. So, we use the resources we have, but we’re always thinking about the future of players and who’s coming up and who we want to have long-term relationships with. It’s a never-ending puzzle. Just when you put a piece in, someone reaches over and takes a piece out. So, we’re trying to fit more pieces in than they’re taking out.”
The Bengals wasted no time in tagging Higgins, the first player to receive the franchise tag this offseason, despite career-worst numbers because of a hamstring injury that kept him out of five games and parts of others. He finished 2023 with 42 catches for 656 yards and five touchdowns.
In four seasons, Higgins has 257 receptions for 3,684 yards and 24 touchdowns.
“It’s really simple: He’s a good player. We want to keep him, and we have resources to do that, so we decided early to do it, and that’s where we are,” Tobin said. “We like Tee. We’re a better team with Tee. With the way that we’ve managed our cap, we had the ability to put the franchise tag on him, and we did.”
The question remains, though, about whether the Bengals will keep him.
