The Bengals Have The Best Value At One Position Group
John Sheeran discusses how the Cincinnati Bengals are getting the most value possible from guards Dalton Risner and Dylan Fairchild, along with center Ted Karras.
Video Transcript
The Bengals are living the dream when it comes to their offensive line, and I don't just mean that they have all five starters in place.
I mean they are getting exactly what they want, with three positions specifically that has always given them trouble.
I'm John Scheuren of A to Z Sports Cincinnati.
This is A to Z Sports Cincinnati, covering your Cincinnati Bengals throughout the 2026 off-season.
We got mandatory mini camp starting up this week, and it'll be the last time that we see the Bengals 90-man roster before they take on a month break leading up to training camp, which officially starts in the last few days of July.
There's about six open practices for everyone, the public to attend inside and outside the, the practice fields outside of Paycor Stadium.
There's one practice inside Paycor Stadium.
There's gonna be some exclusive practices for season ticket holders and club members and things like that.
But this week, this three-day stretch of mandatory mini camp is really the last portion of off-season work that the Bengals are gonna put in before they really start putting on the pads and preparing themselves for the 2026 season.
And training camp, of course, is the first real landmark in terms of identifying what this offensive line is going to look like, not just for the five starters, but also who's backing them up, what the rotation looks like in terms of, you know, starters being replaced by reserves.
Are there players who are repping multiple positions behind the starting five?
You know, is Brian Parker gonna be at right guard more than his left guard?
Is he gonna be at tackle more than guard?
Is he gonna be at center while Connor Liu is continuing to recover from his torn ACL?
Is Cody Ford sticking to left tackle?
Is he also going to right tackle, or are they're gonna utilize, you know, the six or five other backup offensive tackles they have behind starters Amarius Mims and Orlando Brown Jr.?
How are those guys gonna fit into, you know, what the reserves look like in the second and third string?
But more importantly, they're gonna be putting on pads for the first time this year, and it's when we're gonna get a real first taste of what this line looks like against a revamped Bengals defensive line that's gonna s- be sending waves of pass rushers against them for six weeks leading up to week one in September.
And it's truly awesome to feel good about the Bengals offensive line because of how well they finished last year and because all five starters from the last seven weeks of the regular season are gonna be coming back, and there's confidence in all of them to continue that level of play.
And now they have even more chemistry playing next to each other, that they're gonna be one cohesive unit by the time the season starts.
And I have to imagine the Bengals really liked how this line was put together this off-season because of how much they're paying for the interior of the offensive line.
I really didn't think about this until the New York Jets announced an extension for fourth year guard, Joe Tippmann, for four years, about $66 million, which is around the same value of the contract that Orlando Brown Jr. signed back in 2023 to be the Bengals starting left tackle.
And traditionally, not just for the Bengals obviously, but tackles are valued more than guards, and now you're starting to see guards get paid more and more, and that market is inching closer and closer to some of the high tier tackles that you see around the league because guards, and even centers to an extent, they're becoming more valuable as the interior defensive linemen in the league are becoming more and more dominant and harder to stop.
So naturally, you have to make sure that the guys going up against them directly are good enough to, you know, withstand a strong pocket, especially for an offense like the Bengals that drops back 60 to 70% of the time and have a quarterback in Joe Burrow who does so much damage when he has room to step up in the pocket.
And again, the Tippmann contract specifically made me realize the Bengals are not paying very much at all for their starting three interior offensive linemen.
From left to right, you have Dylan Fairchild, Ted Karras, and Don Risner making about $8.3 million in total cash this year.
That is significantly less than even some what some average guards and centers are making by themselves.
This of course started last year when they drafted Fairchild in the third round of the 2025 NFL Draft, and he was gonna sign a contract that was gonna pay him slightly more than just $1 million per year as a late third round pick or a mid-third round pick.
They knew that that contract would be very cost controlled, and if Fairchild ended up being the starting caliber player that they hoped that he would be, and he looked very much the part as a rookie in 2025, he was gonna provide them immense value for the next handful of years at left guard.
Later that off-season, Ted Karras, who was entering his fourth season as the Bengals starting center, he was entering a contract year, and he was getting paid about $5 million or something close to that.
And then he ended up signing a one-year extension that's only gonna pay him four and a half million dollars this season.
Kerris is now the fourteenth highest paid center in the NFL when you just look at raw average annual value, but some of the figures ahead of him on that list are significantly more than just the five million AAV that he's scheduled to make in 2026.
I mean, for God's sakes, Tyler Linderbaum just signed for 27 million a year for the Las Vegas Raiders, and obviously Linderbaum is younger and more athletic and probably a better run blocker.
But Kerris has been nothing but a stout pass protector for the Bengals for the last handful of years.
You've never had to worry about him being a liability in the middle of the offensive line.
Is he the most powerful guy?
No.
But does he have that old man strength?
Absolutely, and he gets the job done more times than not.
And the guy just wants to be in Cincinnati and is just taking these relatively small deals that are even smaller than the original contract that he got paid back in 2022, which paid him about six million a year for three years.
Signing Kerris initially in 2022 is gonna go down as one of the Bengals better free agent decisions in the history of their franchise, because he's just getting more and more valuable because honestly, he's just making less and less relative to how much the cap is increasing and him still being a quality player in this offensive line.
And finally, there's Dalton Risner, who for the entirety of his NFL career, going all the way back to his time with the Denver Broncos when he was, you know, playing on a rookie contract, he has always been undervalued.
Whatever the case may have been as to why he didn't necessarily fit with the Broncos and then with the Vikings when he played there for a handful of years, he was just making these veteran minimum salaries, but he was still providing quality play, specifically as a pass protector.
And that was the hope when the Bengals signed him late last off season, right before the season began, just to provide some depth behind, you know, at the time, starting right guard Lucas Patrick.
And then Risner came on onto the field, you know, during the season, and eventually by the second half the season came around, he was the full-time starter and the offensive line just played significantly better with him out there.
Amarius Mims played better next to him.
Ted Karras was still solid.
So the right side of the offensive line when Joe Burrow came back, it was never an issue.
And the Bengals are only paying him just north of three million this year for high quality pass protection production from their right guard.
Re-signing Risner this off season was one of the Bengals biggest priorities in terms of just managing their own roster, their internal free agents.
And when they were able to get him done, signed before free agency even began, it opened the door for them to just go balls to the wall with the defense knowing that their entire offensive line was taken care of and it was taken care of for a very, very reasonable price.
This doesn't always work.
This strategy of going after value targets and value free agents and value veterans to just fill in the rest of the in- interior of your offensive line, it's not always supposed to work.
It's why the vast majority of other NFL teams are paying a premium for guards and centers nowadays.
It's why Tyler Linderbaum, again, almost got $30 million a year from the Las Vegas Raiders when they had hundreds of millions to spend.
Everybody and their mother is realizing the value of quality interior offensive linemen, the value of making sure that you have, you still have running lanes open as defenses are trying to lighten the box and, you know, stop the pass and therefore you can run it down their throats.
It's still important to have guys who can move guys at the point of attack, but it's also important to make sure that when you face potentially an unretired Aaron Donald or a Chris Jones or a Jeffrey Simmons or a Jalen Carter, that you have dudes up there that can give your quarterback some time and space in the pocket.
Everybody's paying a premium and the Bengals still want to find value and now for the first time in a long time, they've actually found it.
Because during the last 10 years when for the most part the Bengals have not had a good offensive line, the interior has been the problem and it's because they try to just throw out anybody that they can find for minimum salaries and just hope that it works.
But the likes of T.J. Johnson, Alex Redmond, Billy Price, who was still a first round pick, Trey Hopkins, Akinadeniji, Jackson Carmen, like these guys just weren't enough.
And the first time that they had some stability is when they went out and paid Alex Cappa about 9 million a year back in 2022.
We knew this when they let Kevin Zeidler leave for the Cleveland Browns in 2017 for about 11 million a year.
They just didn't value guards or just interior offensive linemen like that.
And they only drafted Billy Price in the first round because they had literally no one else in the roster who could play center at that time.
Even when the Bengals wanna have an explosive offense, they will always have the interior of the offensive line at the bottom of the totem pole in terms of who gets the biggest contracts.
They will never value guards and centers like that.
And even when they do, there'll be contracts that they can easily get out of.
So for them to be spending less than nine, $10 million this year on three quality interior offensive linemen when the rest of the NFL is throwing piles of money at guards and centers, it does make the Bengals look pretty smart.
But it's only smart when the players that they are not paying very much are actually pretty good.
And for the first time in a long time, the Bengals finally found that.
