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Orlando Brown Jr. is the Bengals’ answer, but his arrival creates other O-line questi
Orlando Brown Jr. is the Bengals’ answer, but his arrival creates other O-line questions
KANSAS CITY, MO - OCTOBER 16: Kansas City Chiefs offensive tackle Orlando Brown Jr. (57) blocks Buffalo Bills defensive end AJ Epenesa (57) in the third quarter of an NFL game between the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs on October 16, 2022 at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, MO. Photo by Scott Winters/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
By Jay Morrison
Mar 16, 2023
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The contract agreement with Orlando Brown Jr. on Wednesday delivered the answers to a lot of questions, such as, “What are the Bengals doing?” and “What are they waiting for?” And the time-honored one that’s been dripping with angst and running on a loop for three years: “What are they going to do to protect Joe Burrow?”
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After losing safeties Jessie Bates III and Vonn Bell, tight end Hayden Hurst and running back Samaje Perine in the first three days of free agency and not adding a single outside piece, the Bengals worked late into Wednesday night to secure a deal for the best offensive lineman and No. 4 free agent overall in this year’s class, giving Brown $64.1 million over four years. That falls just shy of Geno Atkins’ four-year, $65.3 million extension as the largest non-quarterback contract in franchise history.
The $31 million signing bonus the Bengals are giving the 6-foot-8, 360-pound four-time Pro Bowler is the most in NFL history for a tackle, who soon could be protecting the highest-paid quarterback in the league.
But while the swing-for-the-fences move answers the biggest question about how serious the Bengals are when it comes to protecting Burrow and maximizing the fleeting opportunity of having a franchise quarterback and elite weapons all playing under affordable cap numbers, it creates a new subset of questions.
Let’s run through some of the biggest ones.
Where will Brown play?
The answer might seem obvious given that teams rarely invest that much money in a player and then ask him to switch positions, but Brown began his career as a right tackle. He only switched to the left side when Ravens All-Pro tackle Ronnie Stanley suffered a season-ending knee injury two days after signing a five-year, $98.8 million extension. And a lot of people believe it’s his best and most natural position. None of those people work inside the walls of Paycor Stadium.
News of Brown’s deal with the Bengals wasn’t five minutes old when the 26-year-old tackle told the NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo how thankful he was to have the opportunity to carry on his father’s legacy as a left tackle.
Then, Thursday morning, offensive line coach Frank Pollack made it clear that his vision aligns with Brown’s while appearing on Bengals radio analyst Dave Lapham’s “In the Trenches” podcast.
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“He’s gonna be our left tackle,” Pollack said. “He’s a unique guy. He’s played both sides and been to the Pro Bowl. That’s impressive. But we brought him here to be our left tackle.”
Brown’s desire to play left tackle, the position his father played for nine seasons with the Ravens and Browns, is what led to his departure from Baltimore. After replacing Stanley at left tackle and going to the Pro Bowl, Brown wanted to stay on that side, but the Ravens had nearly $100 million invested in Stanley, so they traded Brown to the Chiefs before the 2021 season.
Two more Pro Bowls followed, making Brown the only tackle in the league who has been voted to each of the past four. And the Bengals are hoping he can double that run during the four-year deal they are giving him to anchor the left side of a line that includes two other Super Bowl champions in center Ted Karras and right guard Alex Cappa; a left guard in Cordell Volson, who started every game as a rookie; and an opening at right tackle with no shortage of options.
go-deeper
GO DEEPER
Orlando Brown Jr. takes Bengals' protection of Joe Burrow to the next level
What does this mean for Williams?
It’s not as though pursuing Brown was some grand plan and the Bengals were playing coy at the NFL Scouting Combine when talking about how free agency was going to look a lot different this year. Pollack said the deal for Brown just kind of came together over the past few days. But every time Jonah Williams’ name came up in Indianapolis, the responses fell well short of anything you would consider an endorsement. There was lots of hemming and hawing, ifs and buts.
Pollack confirmed the plan is to move Williams to the right side. The 2019 first-round NFL Draft pick will make $12.6 million this year, all of which is guaranteed as part of the fifth-year option the Bengals picked up at the end of 2021. Williams dislocated both kneecaps last year and had surgery last month to repair the most recent one, which occurred in the wild-card victory against the Ravens.
Jonah Williams will be playing on his fifth-year option in 2023. (Vincent Carchietta / USA Today)
Last month at the combine, Bengals offensive coordinator Brian Callahan downplayed the possibility of Williams moving to right tackle.
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“It’d be tough. He’s spent his whole career, really, especially as a pro, as a left tackle,” Callahan said. “Moving him would probably be pretty difficult. It’s probably not something that he would be necessarily excited about, either. I’m sure as a team-first guy, he would do it if that’s what was best for us. But that’s a hard switch to make for a guy that’s played a lot of snaps at left tackle over the course of his career and very minimal at right. He did some at Alabama, but as far as a pro, that’s a pretty difficult switch.”
Those comments, along with Thursday’s signing of Cody Ford — a 2019 second-round pick who played tackle opposite Brown at Oklahoma — make you wonder if the Bengals will consider trading Williams. It doesn’t feel imminent, not with Williams and right tackle La’el Collins coming off surgery. But teams always are looking for offensive linemen, and if the Bengals get into training camp and Williams isn’t a clear-cut No. 1 option, Collins is ahead of schedule and another team has a tackle go down with an injury, the Bengals could clear $12.6 million off this year’s cap and get either a player at another position of need or a draft pick.
If the Bengals can turn Billy Price into B.J. Hill, imagine what they can get for a first-round left tackle with 42 regular-season and five postseason starts.
Throw Jackson Carman, D’Ante Smith, Hakeem Adeniji and Isaiah Prince into the mix and you have an incredibly crowded competition at right tackle. That’s not to say they’re all lining up as equals to start training camp, but the Bengals have invested a lot of time into developing that young core, and Carman’s performance in the divisional playoff win at Buffalo is proof that first impressions can and do change.
Is a tackle still in play at No. 28 in the draft?
Absolutely. Whatever the upcoming season holds for Williams, those conversations in Indy suggest he is not in the Bengals’ long-term plans. And Collins might not be in the long- or short-term plans, either. Adding Brown narrows the pool of candidates at 28, where the Bengals no longer have to toy with the idea of drafting a left tackle and having him play on the right side for a year before moving back to left in 2024.
They can instead home in on someone who has played right tackle in college and keep him at his natural position and see how he compares with Williams in camp. Tennessee’s Darnell Wright and Ohio State’s Dawand Jones played right tackle last season, and if the Bengals want to keep the Oklahoma train rolling, Anton Harrison is a left tackle who might be better suited to playing on the right side in the NFL.
https://theathletic.com/4317708/2023...ampaign=601983
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Last edited by Bengals1181; 03-20-2023 at 09:10 AM.
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sound likes Pollack views Bergeron more as a guard.
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Assuming Jonah at RT
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There’s still a lot of offseason left, but here are some takeaways on what we’ve seen from the free agent market so far:
1. The Cincinnati Bengals hit a home run with the Orlando Brown Jr. signing.
Before free agency started, I thought that Brown would find a deal north of $23 million per year. I wasn’t the only one who set the bar high for him. Former agent Joel Corry, who does a terrific job in analyzing the market, suggested in a CBSSports.com column that Brown’s deal would be in the neighborhood of four years, $94 million with $51.5 million fully guaranteed. The reasoning was simple. Young, durable, above-average left tackles rarely hit the open market, and when they do, they cash in. Brown has missed just one game in his five-year career, and he’ll be just 27 years old at the start of the 2023 season.
But Brown didn’t find the deal he was looking for, and his price dropped—substantially. A big part of free agency, for teams and players alike, is having a plan B, C, and D. Teams go into the offseason with goals of what they want to accomplish. But the market can be unpredictable, and teams that are able to adjust can find an edge. In Brown’s case, according to The Athletic, it was actually his agent who approached the Bengals about a potential deal. The two sides agreed to terms on a four-year, $64.09 million deal ($16.02 million per year) with $31 million fully guaranteed. That makes Brown the NFL’s 10th-highest-paid left tackle. The deal looks even better for the Bengals after Laremy Tunsil reset the market on Monday with an extension from the Texans that will pay him $25 million per year.
Brown has his flaws, especially in the way that athletic edge rushers can give him problems in pass protection. But O-line guru Brandon Thorn had Brown as his top tackle on the market and his eighth-ranked left tackle overall. Again, age and durability matter—a lot. Having All-Pros is great, but oftentimes building an offensive line is about not having a weak link. Based on history, the Bengals can reasonably expect Brown to be on the field for them for most of this contract. And if he performs at a slightly above-average level, this signing is a huge win for a team whose offensive line has been an issue in recent postseasons.
A week ago, it looked like the Bengals’ options for landing a long-term left tackle were limited. Jonah Williams has not played great and is entering the final year of his contract. The Bengals needed a plan for 2024 and beyond to protect Joe Burrow. That could’ve meant signing a Band-Aid veteran option, trading for a left tackle, or trying to land one in the draft. But all those options would’ve come with much more uncertainty than signing Brown does.
The Bengals had no plans of spending big on a left tackle, but when the opportunity to add Brown presented itself, they pounced. If we view quarterback, wide receiver, and left tackle as premium positions on offense, the Bengals might be in the best shape of any team in the NFL with Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase, both of whom will command massive new contracts in the near future, and Brown.
The Bengals lost some key pieces on defense in safeties Jessie Bates III and Vonn Bell. But offensive efficiency is easier to sustain than defensive efficiency, and the Bengals were third in offensive DVOA last season. Maintaining an elite offense year after year is the best way for Cincinnati to keep its Super Bowl window open. By adding Brown on a reasonable contract, the Bengals increased their chances of improving an already strong offense. Even if the Bengals don’t make another addition for the rest of the offseason, they’ve got to be considered legit Super Bowl contenders once again.
https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2023/3...delphia-eagles
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