Cincinnati Bengals: Should Andy Dalton be part of future?

His Contract

Dalton is currently in the midst of the long-term contract extension he signed with Cincinnati before the start of the 2014 season.

For the money he’s owed, Dalton’s contract has actually been a pretty decent deal for the Bengals. In a time where the minimum we see given to any long-term quarterback options is now well into the $20+ million per season range, Dalton’s largest cap hit in any season of his particular deal is set to pay him much less than that ($17.7 million in 2019) while his 2018 hit puts him at 17th among all quarterbacks (per Spotrac).

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If Cincinnati is planning to stick with Dalton, his contract provides really good value. He’s far from perfect, but for the price they’ve been paying he’s been worth the investment. If they were to get rid of him this offseason, any experienced stopgap free agent would likely cost at least that much — and any clear upgrade on him would be well above the current pay range they’ve been sitting in with Dalton under center.

If the Bengals do want to move on from him though, at least it won’t hurt their cap. According to both OverTheCap and Spotrac, this will be the first year where the Bengals won’t be on the hook for a significant amount of money if they decide to go in another direction. In fact, they’ll apparently see no dead cap hit at all if the team were to cut him this offseason.

Should Cincinnati want to go full-on rebuild, they’ve got that option readily available. There’s two paths they could follow from there: go super cheap and hope things work out in a transitional season with unheralded backups and/or former big names holding down the fort, or use a high draft pick on a potential franchise quarterback in the upcoming draft.

The former would give the team more money to spend elsewhere on a roster littered with massive holes, with an outside shot at some immediate competitiveness if they strike gold between the moves used to fill those holes, their new head coach, and whichever cheap quarterbacking option they bring into the fold. The latter would be an attempt to follow the trend we’ve seen of teams capitalizing on a cheap rookie contracts to allow them to spend big on upgrades elsewhere on the roster.