On dudes that couldn’t make a team.

Yay

A report on the same report. Awesome.

@RapSheet
A stunner: The #Bengals are releasing starting safety George Iloka, per @MikeGarafolo and me. He’s started every game he’s played in since 2013. Purely a financial decision, but a 28-year-old safety hitting the market at this point is good news for interested teams.


Welp, no sooner do we talk about guys with talent hitting the open market...

I do think that Safety has the potential to be the bright spot of this D with Geathars/Hooker, but that’s just potential. Given that neither of them finished he season last year I’m not sure we should be sticking our noses up at this. That, and our defense needs a talent infusion, period.

La confora says this didn’t happen

I wouldn’t trade him yet anyway. Maybe next yr. because after that he is going to hit the open market and get a lot more than we are paying him now

It isn't always about a lack of talent, younger guys can do as well for less get vets cut

Ballard wants to build thru the draft. In order to do that you need to let the players you draft play. He appears set on doing just that.

I agree. I've got high hopes for Braden Smith, Darius Leonard and Skai Moore. Nelson should be a perennial All Pro and Deon Caine may have been on his way to becoming at WR3. Wilkins has been promsing and Hines needs to show more.

If all of those guys hit, Ballard is genius.

"If" is one of the smallest, yet most powerful words in our language.

There are way to many holes on the roster to be solved strictly through the draft. They are paper thin and / or lacking talent at LB, WR, and CB even if 3/4 of his draft picks pan out. And they are lacking play makers at plenty of other positions. QB, TE, and the two kickers are the only positions that I’m comfortable with the overall talent level. OL is definitely better but RT at least is still a concern. And they are screwed if Castonzo misses significant time at any point. Leaving major holes in the roster while hoarding cap space so that you can see if your 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th round draft picks pan out is fuckng asinine. I understand building a culture, I just disagree that you can only do that strictly through the draft. It certainly means you do your homework and you don’t bring in the Dez Bryants. But Ballard’s approach is costing years from our franchise QB. To me it screams arrogance and I simply don’t agree with the approach with Luck in place.

And before someone uses Grigson as an example of why Ballard is right to build this way let me say that just because it’s the opposite of Grigsons approach doesn’t make it right. As tempting as that is to believe. Grigson was an ass and a horrible GM, but the general idea of using free agency as a stop gap to increase the talent level until young guys took over wasn’t in itself the problem IMO. Grigsons problem was that he sucked at talent evaluation, wasn’t on the same page as his coach, and the coaching staff generally sucked. The one thing Grigson did right was bring up the talent level through free agency while not hurting their cap situation long term. The problem was the young guys were never developed. Free agency wasn’t the problem, shitty drafting and poor coaching was. Even with those two major downfalls the team got to an AFC title game. Werethey legit contenders? Of course not. They did it on the back of Luck and a shitty division. A franchise QB gives you a chance. Which is exactly why it sucks to look at the major holes on the roster and know how much cap space was available.