Is Shemar holding out?

[Soonerpeace]

(06-11-2025, 02:43 PM)ochocincos Wrote: Part of that is Marvin+Taylor drafting guys a year early and giving them a year to ride the bench, but that's on them/the organization for going that approach.

Teams only need to look back at the Chiefs in 2022 to see how impactful immediate rookie contributions can be, as evidenced by Karlaftis, McDuffie, Pacheco, and Chenal's contributions that year on their way to win the Super Bowl.
2022 was the first big year of Mahomes's salary kicking in, having a $35.8 mill cap hit at the time, up from just $7.4 mill the year prior.
That was also the year the Chiefs traded Hill to the Dolphins for a boat load of draft picks, which helped them balance the salary cap and try to get a new set of young guys to come in.

Bengals need to find a way to get their young defensive guys to contribute earlier and more often than they have been historically.

That was mostly Lou not Zac. Zac didn’t infringe on Lou until last year much. He was not happy early on. The Bengals are unique in that the coaching staff has a lot of impact in the draft. If you look Hobby, Pollack, and Bettcher. Bettcher and Lou were tight and Golden was going to run that. Pollack? Hobby? We’ve not recruited there well or even hit much in the portal. But Duke said we’ve got to have rookies play now around the draft. Had to be an issue with Lou slow playing some.