Locked On Bengals - Daily Podcast On The Cincinnati Bengals - Bengals Got a GREAT DEAL on Dalton Risner's Contract

Starting point is 00:00:00 Don Reisner really meant it when he said he wanted to be back in Cincinnati, and the contract details prove it. Let's dive in. You are Locked on Bengals, your daily Cincinnati Bengals podcast, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. What up Bengals fans and welcome to a mini episode of the Lockdown Bengals podcast. Today we're going to dive into the details on the Dalton Risler contract and everything we know so far. He's James Rapine. I'm Jake Liskow.

Starting point is 00:00:36 We are your host of the Lockdown Bengals podcast. And, well, we're part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day, and the number one sports podcast network in the land. James, as we dive into the details here for Dalton Riser's contract, this is a more team-friendly deal than I could have possibly expected Dalton Risner to agree to. When this guy got up on that podium and talked about how thankful he was and how much he felt seen and valued by the Cincinnati Bengals organization. The contract that he signed backs all of that up, I think, in a pretty significant way when you dive into the details.

Starting point is 00:01:16 The base value here coming out to about $3.7 million or $3.25 million, depending on whether one of the many incentives is considered to be likely to be earned or not. currently over the cap has it at $3.7.2 million for the cap hit with an additional bit of money available to Dalton Reiser and incentives up to $5 million. But when you tie together, the deal he took what I thought it would take to get a deal done with Reisner and what the timing was and what his comments were really paints a clear picture about Reisner's priorities this offseason. It does. It does. This was, you know, we called it a layup. This was like an Ali Upe with on air.

Starting point is 00:02:02 Like there was no defenders around. Right. I mean, the fact that he's willing to take this deal, this is backup. Like, you know, we talked about on our last show about Jordan battle and like if you extend Jordan battle, it could take you out of a free agent safety or out of like Caleb Downs. Reisner's deal does none of that for anything because of the money he's

Starting point is 00:02:26 making. Like obviously he's going to start and that's the plan. But it's just such a great value that, yes, sign me up all day long. Think about what the Bengals are investing in at Guard right now. They have a third round, second year player. They have a guy in Reisner who's making just over $3 million. Ted Caris is a bargain. The whole interior of their offensive line is a heck of a bargain right now. So you're welcome, Bengals, is what Dalton Reisner should have said. You know, who's hugging everyone in really excited to be back in all of those things. I would have been stunned if he didn't get a tad more minimum.

Starting point is 00:03:04 And then probably an extra year if he goes to the free agent market. But he loved Cincinnati. He loved Joe Burrow. He wanted to be here. And he gave the Bengals a bargain that hopefully they can take advantage of an add to the roster. Yeah, I think that's the surprising thing is that he really, and he said it, pushed his agent to get this thing done, didn't care what the free agent offers were going to be. And maybe it's all lip service.

Starting point is 00:03:27 maybe this is the best he was going to do, right? Like, we always have to acknowledge that possibility. The cynic in me has to come out and acknowledge it. Like, yeah, maybe they did their due diligence of the combine, and nobody was really terribly impressed with Dalton Riser. But we were impressed with Dalton Riser. We thought that he was a pass blocker, especially in the second half of the year,

Starting point is 00:03:45 that we have expected he could be for this team when we've been talking about him as a potential target for this team for the last several years. And then he excelled as a run blocker beside Amarius Mims. And Amarius Mins started playing better down the stretch beside Dalton Riser. So I think this is something that you can see

Starting point is 00:04:07 as an unambiguous win for the Bengals. Again, I remain surprised that Dalton Riser was interested in taking a deal like this one that's so incentive Lattin, he's got $500,000 in per game roster bonuses. He's got $500,000 in a likely to be earned bonus and up to $1.75 million in total incentives, like, yeah, it can get to $5 million,

Starting point is 00:04:30 but a whole lot of this deal tied up in incentives that are probably playtime incentives and team success incentives and things like that. And it sets up the Bengals beautifully for the offseason, right? If they, for whatever reason, have a guard fall into their lap that they really like, well, they could even consider that as an upgrade if they were so inclined with this level of money.

Starting point is 00:04:56 I'm not saying that's going to be one of their priorities or anything like that, but this is really not a ton of money for Dalton Riser, considering the level of play they got from him last year. And like I said, I think it sets him up really well to continue to attack free agency aggressively. It doesn't really impact their budget substantially in that way either. And we can get into some of those details and what that picture looks like as well here as we continue the conversation on Dalton Riser's contract details. coming up, that's. Hey, it's Matt Derry from the Lockdown Lions podcast. The people I love depend on me.

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Starting point is 00:07:16 Jake, it's just a steel of a deal, as we've highlighted. And I think the other thing here that it really does, maybe they splurge a little bit on that swing tackle. Maybe they're willing to do that. And it gives them a little extra money in that department. Everyone's talking about the defensive line or the defense in general and rightfully so. but maybe you can get an upgrade there. Obviously, it doesn't need to impact your long-term draft outlook or anything like that. But I know that's an area that a lot of us have thought about.

Starting point is 00:07:59 And not that there's a ton out there anyway, but if they find that right guy and he costs $3 million instead of $2 million and they only want to spend $2 million, well, maybe now they can spend that $3 million because they have Dalton Reisner and they're such a good deal. Yeah, and maybe it gives you a little bit of money to spend on tight end. maybe this is what they expected all along and it doesn't impact any of those things. But even with the Dalton Riser deal accounted for, the Bengals still have around $50 million in salary cap space before you account for things like the practice squad. And that does include rookie expenses that will be coming along.

Starting point is 00:08:34 And so the Bengals are still in a great situation from a cap space perspective. I still have them around $70 million. and cash that they can spend this off season. And so that's still plenty of money. Now, where they choose to allocate it is what we're going to continue to watch. And we spent some time talking about the defensive needs and the way they're going to attack this defense in our full show yesterday, probably as you're listening to this,

Starting point is 00:09:03 the one where we talked about the Jordan Battle extension. And so there's some more thoughts from us there as far as what we expect the Bengals to do toward the end of that episode. And we'll get into it here in the next couple of days. the next couple of episodes as we get into our final free agent preview content, but a whole lot of money left for the Bengals to go attack this offseason to get a guard that was really good for them down the stretch. And if he plays like that for a full season,

Starting point is 00:09:31 absolutely going to be a guy that they are happy to have under contract at that number. Like you said, plenty of work to do as far as do they want to go get some offensive line depth. Do they want to go attack, swing tackle more aggressively, and how are they going to go attack this defense? But the way this contract sets them up, it really should not impact any of their offseason plans whatsoever, which is one of the many reasons this was seen as such a layup, and we wanted to see it get done early. Yeah. And how rare is it for them to be in this position when it comes to the offensive line? I mean, I just, I think about that in how I just brought up backup swing tackle versus last year we were talking about both guard spots a couple of years ago we were

Starting point is 00:10:18 wondering should they get a center guard of the future and look did did it work out it's worked out where you've been about that that starting unit going into an offseason period going into free I think for the first time in the Joeboro era we'll wrap up there for this many episode of the lockdown bengals podcast wanted to make sure we got you the update now that we have more of an idea of what exactly the Dalton Riser contract looks like, all those incentives in there. And you can believe him, take him at his word, I think, when he says he really wants to be back in Cincinnati, not only that is one of his bigger per year paydays in his NFL career.

Starting point is 00:10:58 So a bit of a win-win there, despite us seeing it as a really team-friendly deal, given the way Dalton Riser finished the season for the Bengals last year. Until next time, thanks for listening to this episode of the Lockdown Bengals podcast. Houda and have a go.

Locked On Bengals - Daily Podcast On The Cincinnati Bengals - Bengals Got a GREAT DEAL on Dalton Risner's Contract

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