Bengals Could Restructure QB Joe Burrow’s Contract

The Bengals are presently near the bottom of the league in cap room (just over $7MM), and they could go the restructure route to create a little cushion. Quarterback Joe Burrow’s ~$48MM cap charge stands out as the most obvious target, and director of player personnel Duke Tobin suggested he may seek to rework his franchise passer’s contract.

“Those are things that we’re working through after the draft,” Tobin said at the end of last month (via Pat Brennan of the Cincinnati Enquirer). “We’ve layered in challenges, but we’re up to them, and we do it because we have the opportunity to add the right people and the right player.”

The challenges Tobin referenced include the limited cap space that accompanies high-dollar expenditures. In order to address the defensive shortcomings that have held the Bengals back over the past several seasons, Tobin authorized eight-figure deals for EDGE Boye Mafe, safety Bryan Cook, and defensive lineman Jonathan Allen in March, and he also took on defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence’s hefty contract via a pre-draft trade with the Giants (Tobin extended Lawrence’s pact shortly thereafter).

Tobin says his team is “damn close” to the top of the NFL in terms of roster spending, and Burrow’s $25.25MM base salary for 2026 is a big part of that. As Brennan observes, Burrow said last year that he was amenable to reworking the five-year, $275MM deal he inked in 2023 in order to make room for wideouts Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins, and it stands to reason he would be similarly willing this year.

After all, the types of restructure that would be in play here have no worse than a neutral impact on the player, so they tend to be drama-free transactions. Burrow’s case is perhaps a bit different in light of some comments he made in December, comments that briefly led to retirement and trade speculation. While such rumors were promptly quashed, subsequent reports suggested Burrow was nonetheless trying to put some pressure on the Bengals by being candid about his dissatisfaction.

If that was the case, the historically-conservative franchise’s active offseason indicates Burrow achieved his goal (just as he did when Cincinnati re-signed Higgins while simultaneously greenlighting a record-setting deal for Chase). A restructure would make it more difficult for the Bengals to trade Burrow in the near future, and though a trade seems like little more than a pipe dream for interested teams – who were expected to chase that dream just the same – Burrow’s acquiescence to a reworked deal would seem to further solidify his Cincinnati future.