The Cincinnati Bengals enter the offseason with droves of cap space to work with as they run it back with head coach Zac Taylor.
Perhaps most interesting is how the Bengals might use that cap space to bring on outside help.
According to Spotrac, the Bengals are projected to have roughly $77.8 million in free cap space right now, based on a roughly $304 million salary cap and $10.8 million rolled over from 2025 by the Bengals.
It doesn’t sound like Trey Hendrickson will be back with the Bengals, but if that happens, it would cost roughly anywhere from $29 to $35 or so million of cap space, as a very rough estimation.
Otherwise, the Bengals don’t have a ton of free agents projected to eat into the cap space. Joseph Ossai, Dalton Risner and a few others are names they likely want to bring back, but guys like Geno Stone, Noah Fant and Cam Taylor-Britt are debatable.
The Bengals could work some cap magic to do extensions with the likes of DJ Turner early. But otherwise, it’s reasonable to expect they spend a healthy amount of cap space on outside free agents, similar to when they initially went and got Hendrickson and DJ Reader years ago.
