2026 Cincinnati Bengals Free Agency Primer

Bengals Mascot dances before the NFL preseason game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Indianapolis Colts at Paycor Stadium in Cincinnati on Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024. We are about to enter one of the most exciting periods of the offseason: NFL free agency. This is a period that players with expir

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What is the story about?

We are about to enter one of the most exciting periods of the offseason: NFL free agency. This is a period that players with expiring contracts can hit what is commonly explained as the “open market.” It is easily the most movement you will see among teams, and watching the dust settle is always something.

The Cincinnati Bengals have commonly not been big players in this phase for one reason or another. A big reason in the past few offseasons has been the explosion of guaranteed money included in players’

contracts (especially with the top free agents), which fans know they are already reluctant to give to their own players.

Still, the team has plenty of money to throw around, and they have a ton of needs because of some bad draft classes and not planning.

Here is our 2026 Cincinnati Bengals Free Agency Primer:

How Free Agency Works

The Legal Tampering Period begins at noon on March 9th (Monday).

I love getting to explain the Legal Tampering Period. Long story short, NFL teams weren’t supposed to talk to potential free agents on other teams until the new league year started. It was so obvious that teams were tampering because as soon as the clock struck 4 PM with full detailed contracts. Because this would routinely happen and the NFL could not stop it, they created a 48-hour period prior to actual free agency starting, so that teams could do all their tampering during that time.

The New League Year (and free agency) begins Wednesday, March 11th at 4 PM.

This is the period where teams can officially start signing players from other teams. This essentially runs until the end of the 2027 season’s Super Bowl, but the big news usually flies on the first few days, with a second wave that comes some time after the NFL Draft.

Bengals Cap Space

Cincinnati has roughly $47 million, according to Over The Cap (which many of these cap references will be coming from). There are ways to make quite a bit more, though.

Potential Cap Casualties

The most likely cap casualty would be defensive tackle TJ Slayton. Slayton was signed last Offseason, and cutting him would create roughly $6.4 million in cap space while only adding $2.5 million in dead money. That dead money is something the Bengals hate to have.

That is the big reason you likely won’t see left tackle Orlando Brown Jr. actually get cut despite it creating close to $14 million in cap space. He would also create almost $8 million in dead money. Not to mention, this team has never had an offensive line as good as they had last year, and cutting Brown just to replace him would cost them much more.

If the Bengals wanted to easily create more space, they could restructure the contracts for Tee Higgins, Ja’Marr Chase, and Joe Burrow. Simply converting salary to signing bonus (which is something many other teams do) does wonders for cap space. This is something out of the Bengals’ comfort zone, and they didn’t do it when they could have last season. So we won’t be taking that into account.

Biggest needs

The Bengals have serious defensive needs, but they are not completely covered on the offensive side of the ball either. Any successful team is thinking a couple of years ahead of time right now. Some of these are more likely to be filled via the draft with younger players, but I will still list them here.