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Bengals Should Have Tagged Benson

18. February 2009  - Published by Dan Clasgens
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The Bengals sent a shockwave through their fan base on Monday when they placed their franchise tag on place kicker Shayne Graham. You can count me amongst those who supports the decision to let T.J. Houshmandzadeh walk, but what about tagging running back Cedric Benson?

Let's face it the team has plenty of holes. Their offensive line had more holes than good Swiss cheese in 2008. Their defense continues to get lit up like the skies over the Ohio River during RiverFest and the lockerroom is full of bad apples that are killing the rest of the tree.

Still, the team needs to have a running back. The Chris Perry Experiment is over. He proved that last season when he managed just 269 yards on 104 carries (2.6 ypc) and fumbled the ball at an alarming rate. Even healthy, Perry couldn't help the cause. Kenny Watson is a third-down back at best. Kenny Irons' knee is shredded.

Enter in Cedric Benson. The guy came into the league with plenty of hype and a big contract when the Bears made him their first round pick in the 2005 draft. However, after much trouble off-the-field and inconsistency on it, Chicago parted ways with their disgruntled running back.

The Bengals gave him a second chance and Benson made the most of it. He finished the season with 747 yards in just 12 game, including back-to-back 100+-yard efforts in the season's last two games.

"Without a doubt he was a savior for us," offensive coordinator Bob Bratkowski said of Benson earlier this off-season. "He ran extremely hard and worked very hard to learn our system in a short amount of time."

Retaining Benson for another season via the franchise tag would have cost $6.621 million, which equates to only 5.4 percent of the team’s 2009 salary limit.

Now, he enters free agency and can be had easily by another running back starved team. If he walks, who is going to carry the rock next year for the Bengals?

I didn't want to see the team invest huge money in multi-year deal to keep Benson, but now they are going to have to. It seems like locking him in for one more year would give them a better chance to see if he can build upon that and provide them some insurance heading into the off-season free agency and college draft.

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Comments

Jimmy Dinsmore
Jimmy Dinsmore
2/18/2009 1:39:44 PM #
I think Benson is still a priority for the team. I think they feel they can get him cheaper than the franchise tag amount, so of course that's what they'll do. With Fred Taylor and Deuce McCallister out there, Benson won't be as hot of a commodity and won't have as many bidders. The team should try to snag him for like 2 years 10+ million. Then focus on the line in the draft (Offense and Defense). Of course this is the Bengals and Mike Brown, so who knows if that's what they'll do.
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