Latest report on Tee Higgins' contract paints the Bengals in a nonsensical light

There's no positive update to report on Tee Higgins' future with the Cincinnati Bengals. The fifth-year wide receiver is still scheduled to play on the franchise tag for the 2024 season.

Higgins' camp and the Bengals have not been close on an extension since talks initially began a year ago, and the club placed the tag on the 25-year old wide receiver before any other team used it back in February.

Based on how much the Bengals reportedly offered Higgins, placing the tag on him and not trading him looks like a ridiculous decision... almost too ridiculous to be true.

Bengals' reported offer to Tee Higgins makes zero sense

As the wide receiver market has continued to grow, Higgins and the Bengals have had differences of how much he should be paid. 

According to Kelsey Conway of Cincinnati.com, Higgins' camp was aiming for the range of which Indianapolis Colts receiver Michael Pittman signed for recently: $23.33 million per year.

Per Conway's report, the Bengals didn't eclipse $20 million per year.

"The Bengals never approached the $20 million range for Higgins, sources told The Enquirer. Due to the original offer Cincinnati’s front office gave Higgins for his annual salary, the two sides never advanced to the next round of conversations which would have been about guaranteed money, sources also confirmed to The Enquirer." - Cincinnati.com's Kelsey Conway

There's a very real issue with this. If the Bengals wouldn’t entertain the idea of paying Higgins ~$23m a year, why would they be rather eager to pay him just under $22m for this season? The tag for wideouts is exactly $21.816m in both cap and cash. That money can't be manipulated or spread out. 

This information means the Bengals value Higgins at a lower per-year price than the price they're paying for him to play for one year. That doesn't seem to add up unless the Bengals just wanted to hold on to Higgins for a trade. Higgins remains with the team and there's been zero reports of any trade coming close to happening.

You know what also doesn't add up? Tagging Higgins again next year. The justification for tagging him so quickly to begin with starts with the idea of using the tag again next year, and with the rise of the receiver market, it would make keeping Higgins a more valuable move.

The price of tagging Higgins again in 2025 is 120% of what the current 2024 tag is, which would put the 2025 price at $26.1792m. 

Combine the two tags and you get what is essentially a two-year, $47.9952m contract. That averages out to $23.9976m a year — a multi-year deal with a higher average annual value than Pittman got from the Colts.

If the Bengals don't value Higgins at that AAV, it makes absolutely no sense for them to use the tag on him in 2025, no matter how good he plays in 2024. Their evaluation of him is not going to magically jump millions of dollars if this sub $20m price originated following a very successful 2022 season for Higgins. He racked up 1,029 yards and seven touchdowns that year in his WR2 role. 

There's a very high probability that this information is coming from Higgins' camp, a group that has an incentive to make the Bengals look bad in this dispute. They're either leaking the truth, and the Bengals are setting themselves up to pay Higgins a lot more than they feel he's worth, or they're attempting to make the club look ridiculously incompetent.

One side has to be true.