Revealing stat turns Bengals de facto general manager's bold offseason statement into an ice cold take

Tobin and Cincy's personnel department were always going to spend more money this year compared to last. The salary cap dramatically rose to $279.2 million and extensions for both Chase and Higgins were going to cost a few truckloads of cash. More cash is on the way for Hendrickson if and when that situation gets resolved.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with paying any of those three players. That was always the plan for Tobin, but the other half of the plan was to add more talent outside of last year's locker room. The obstacle was getting the large internal deals done first to pave the way for help around them. 

"The earlier we can do some of this stuff, the freer it [makes] us to build the rest of the team," Tobin said. "We have other needs that we want to build, and so we want to get these kind of things done early enough to where we can really focus on building out the rest of the football team. They're all priorities to us, but the ones that aren't signed are the ones that are on the table first." 

Chase and Higgins didn't agree to terms until Friday night during the first week of free agency. Cincinnati managed to acquire Samaje Perine, T.J. Slaton Jr., and Oren Burks as external free agents in the mean time, but most of their moves leading up to their wideouts being paid were retaining ancillary pieces of the team such as Joseph Ossai, Cam Sample, and Marco Wilson.

The Bengals looked like a team that wanted to run things back from the year prior, despite what the de facto general manager said he wanted to accomplish not even a month before free agency ensued. 

Only four other teams are truly running it back to a larger degree. Whether or not Tobin wanted this, it's the team that's in front of him. He'll have to own that bold statement and hope it works out for the best.