What feels like one of the most obvious offseason points for the Cincinnati Bengals is the departure of running back Joe Mixon.
Mixon’s cap hit north of $12 million in 2023 is simply too much in today’s NFL, especially for a team like the Bengals that needs to worry about big-ticket items like extensions for Joe Burrow and his receiving weapons.
That’s true of any running back, too. Aaron Jones just agreed to a massive pay cut that will allow him to stay with the Green Bay Packers. The team turned his massive signing bonus into a roster bonus, lessening the cap hit in 2023.
Jones is one of the game’s elite, having just rushed for a career-high 1,121 yards on a 5.3 average and caught 59 passes, his fourth season in a row with at least 47 catches.
Mixon just caught a career-high 60 passes, but his continued absence in critical situations because of his liabilities as a pass-blocker overrules almost any statistical output at this point.
Still, there’s value in retaining Mixon for the clear-cut importance he has to the locker room. But if the Bengals make him a post-June 1 cut, they save roughly $10 million against the cap — not an insignificant number for a team with a huge list of free agents and potentially wanting to sign a starting offensive lineman, for example.
The idea has always been to restructure Mixon’s cap hit if they don’t cut him and the Packers and Jones just provided a bit of a blueprint.
We’d be remiss not to mention Mixon’s recent off-field allegations but unless something further develops on that front, barring the team outright releasing him, a restructure remains a possibility.
