The Bengals Next Big Extension Could Be DJ Turner
John Sheeran discusses Cincinnati Bengals cornerback DJ Turner and a cryptic message his agent posted Sunday night that could imply a contract extension is on the horizon.
Video Transcript
Is D.J.
Turner about to be paid by the Bengals?
Because it looks like the one person who would know that more than anyone seems to be hinting at that.
I'm John Sheeran of A to Z Sports Cincinnati.
This is A to Z Sports Cincinnati, covering your Cincinnati Bengals throughout the 2026 off-season.
There's one big fish left to fry for the Bengals this off-season, and it's making sure that cornerback D.J.
Turner is taken care of for the long term.
Turner is entering a contract year, entering his fourth year of his four-year rookie contract after being drafted back in 2023, and he had a career year in 2025 as a full-time starter for the Bengals.
He led the NFL in passes defense for most of the 2025 season.
And if the Bengals had a competent defense around him, he probably would've been a first-time Pro Bowler as well.
Cincinnati has made a lot of financial decisions this off-season.
They've restructured Joe Burrow's contract.
They signed Dexter Lawrence to a one-year extension after trading the 10th overall pick for him.
They signed Bryan Cook, Boye Mafe, Jonathan Allen in free agency.
But in terms of their own players, in terms of their own guys that they need to pay a little bit more money, they haven't really done anything about that yet.
And Turner is the guy that's going to get the biggest contract out of any of their own internal players with extensions.
Sure, there are Miles Murphy, Chase Brown, and fellow cornerback Dax Hill that are also looking to get some paydays this off-season, but none of them are gonna come close to what Turner's going to get in terms of average annual value, and probably in guaranteed money as well.
And for that reason, it's why I thought that this deal with Turner was going to come last and maybe take the longest, maybe right up to the start of the regular season, or maybe not even happen at all if the two sides just weren't able to come to an agreement.
But it looks like an agreement is gonna come a lot sooner than we expected.
On Sunday night, Turner's agent, Andre Odom, posted this graphic to his Instagram Story with the caption, "CB1 calculated," and the emoji, "Soon," with a arrow pointed towards a big stack of money in the cartoon of Tom and Jerry with the cat, Tom, you know, counting up some bands himself, and he tagged Turner in the post as well.
Obviously, Odom represents a lot of NFL players, but this specifically referenced D.J., D.J.
Turner.
Now, whether it means that a deal is coming really soon or that the framework of the deal has been negotiated with the Bengals, and that seems to be said, what this specifically means, we do not know.
But it's pretty clear that this is a positive sign in how negotiations are going with D.J.
Turner.
And shout out to Locked On Bengals co-host Jake Lisko for finding this on social media and also recognizing that D.J.
Turner also posted the picture to his Instagram Story as well.
Now, as of the time of this recording, there hasn't been any national reports about a deal between Turner and the Bengals getting close or reaching the finish line or anything like that.
So again, the actual details of what this tease, this cryptic, post means are still unknown.
But I think it's still notable when an agent posts a graphic like that with that clear insinuation that a deal is coming soon and that the numbers have been, quote, unquote, "calculated."
That does seem to be a good sign and is heading towards the right direction.
Now, if the Bengals and Turner are able to get a deal done before the end of this off-season, I would say that that's good news, but it's also borderline expected, right?
Turner is, again, their top priority in terms of extending their own players.
He is, right now, the best player from that very quality 2023 draft class that also includes Murphy and also includes Jordan Battle, who's up for a potential extension, Andre Josipha, who's entering a contract year, and Chase Brown as well.
It was a really talented, draft class when looking back, you know, three, four years later now.
But Turner right now, he's, he's the starter.
He's the guy who's most likely to make a Pro Bowl for the first time in his career.
He's the leader of this cornerback group that doesn't have a lot of long-term security aside from Takaryo Davis, who was this year's third round pick, and he's now emerging as a leader in that group and in the locker room as a whole.
And I think he took a really strong step forward in that regard last season when he was truly fully featured as a starting player.
Remember, he came off the bench in week one of last year, and he made a clutch, essentially game-winning interception against the Cleveland Browns and never saw the bench again.
But he dealt with injuries in his first couple of years.
He dealt with just, you know, playing on and off the field when Chid, Chidobe Awuzie was coming back from injury.
Cam Taylor-Britt was always ahead of him on the depth chart as well, and they wanted to prioritize Dax Hill at some times at cornerback throughout the last couple of years as well.
It's been a long road over the last three to four years for Turner getting to this spot, and he's definitely earned the distinction of being the Bengals top cornerback and being paid as the top cornerback.
Now, I also want to address, you know, obviously him, or his agent I should say, calling him CB1 in this, announcement of his.
And I don't know if that means that he's gonna be the highest paid cornerback in the NFL or if just this deal locks him in as the Bengals top cornerback.
I know for a fact that no matter what this deal looks like, he's going to be the highest paid cornerback in the history of the Cincinnati Bengals.
In fact, the only other contract that I think really comes to the top of my head in terms of average annual value was Drake Kirkpatrick, who got like something around like 11 million per year, back in 2017.
Jonathan Joseph obviously left for the Houston Texans.
Leon Hall was paid nicely by the Bengals, but he never, I don't think, sniffed 11 million per year.
So it has been a while since the Bengals gave out a major contract to a cornerback, and it would be something if the Bengals made Joe Burrow the highest paid quarterback in the NFL in 2024, Ja'Marr Chase the highest paid non-quarterback offensive player in 2025, and then D.J.
Turner the highest paid cornerback in 2026.
It would certainly eliminate a lot of narratives about how will the Bengals can afford to keep paying these players, and it would probably indicate that they structured that deal in a way that includes a lot of guaranteed money.
But again, I'm not going to go out on, on a limb here and say that Turner's gonna be the highest paid cornerback in the NFL.
That is a really expensive title to hold.
You have to eclipse $30 million per year.
I think he's going to eclipse 20 million per year, somewhere in that range between 20 and 25 million.
Maybe it's a little bit more.
Regardless, I don't think he's touching like Derek Stingley, Sauce Gardner numbers necessarily.
I think this will lock him in, though, as the clear number one cornerback in the Bengals depth chart.
Whatever Turner does get paid, we'll, we'll handle that one wh- when it gets there.
The fact that this could be happening weeks before training camp begins is the most surprising aspect of all of this because looking back at the Bengals history, a lot of their big time extensions, they have come between the start of training camp and the start of the regular season.
Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins became kind of the exception to that rule after both of those negotiations fell through in 2023 and 2024 respectively, and then the new deadline became, like, free agency in 2025, and that was, like, the big thing that the Bengals pounded their chests about last off season.
But Joe Burrow was extended right before 2023, the likes of Sam Hubbard, Joe Mixon, other notable franchise staples in recent memory, going all the way back even before the Zac Taylor era.
All those extensions typically happened leading up to week one.
And specifically with Turner, again, like, we can tell that there's going to be a lot of money in this deal, a lot more money than probably any other deal that the Bengals, agree and negotiate for the rest of this off season.
I figured that it would take the most amount of time.
So if this gets done even days before training camp, that is a massive win for the Bengals.
And it could be a bigger win if Turner was even threatening to, like, hold out or hold in during training camp, but we never really got that sense from him when he showed up for OTAs and then mandatory mini camp.
And he made it clear that he wants to be in the building with his teammates and continue to emerge as the leader that he's become over the last year.
So he's not necessarily worried about exercising all of his leverage to get this contract like some players who have come before him have tried to do so.
And that's really good for him because, like a lot of those players, like Jesse Bates and Tee Higgins, at least for some part, they weren't able to get the deals that they desired.
But Turner is taking a different approach.
He's prioritizing, you know, staying ready whenever that moment comes, and he knows that he still has more to prove even after this deal gets signed, if it does get signed.
I think he wants to continue to elevate his game and make sure that he locks in that first Pro Bowl or maybe even All-Pro honor if he gets the chance in 2026, that the rest of the Bengals defense steps up and makes him look even better.
Strictly from a Bengals front office perspective, though, this is a massive deal that they're negotiating, and if they get it done, whether it's just by the end of this month or by the time the training camp starts, again, we don't know how far along negotiations are and how close they are to getting to that finish line.
But it does seem like a pretty fair expectation that this does get done by the time the training camp starts.
And it would be a massive weight off of Turner's shoulders, regardless if he's practicing or not.
The fact that that's behind him and he can just truly focus on playing ball and getting ready for the season, that would be a massive win for him and the rest of the Bengals defense, and it would allow the front office to, like, solely focus on the likes of Hill, Murphy, and potentially Brown if they want to get all three of those guys done.
They restructured Joe Burrow's contract to make sure that they had enough s- current salary cap space to get some of these deals done, and Turner was going to be the biggest deal and probably the largest spike in current salary cap hit.
So that's gonna take up a decent amount of the space that they created when they restructured Burrow's contract.
But if they were t- able to get that done and out of the way, and then they can focus on some of the smaller deals, I think it'll make the rest of the off season that much easier.
Again, we don't know the exact timeline of all this.
This all stems from an Instagram story post from Turner's agent.
But it does appear to be good news, and it does seem like it's fair to expect that the deal could be coming together within the next few weeks.
And when that happens, we will break it down right here on A to Z Sports Cincinnati.
