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I_C_Deadpeople

BENGALS FANATIC
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  2. Keeping our enemies close: 2023

    in THE BENGALS FORUM - For Bengals Fans *Only*

    Posted

    14 hours ago, BlackJesus said:

    Another variable though, which years ...

     

    IMG_20230726_021949.jpg

    On the surface, it’s a five-year, $262.5 million extension for Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert. It makes him the highest-paid player in NFL history, at $52.5 million per year.

    But there’s an old trick that has been used to inflate the perception of the deal. New money.

    Herbert actually signed a seven-year deal, with the $262.5 million added to what he was due to make over the next two years: $4.234 million in 2023 and $29.5 million in 2024. That’s $33.734 million in so-called old money.

    Added to the $262.5 million in new money, Herbert has a seven-year, $296.234 million contract. That’s an average of $42.3 million per year

    While hardly peanuts, it’s a far cry from $52.5 million. And it’s important when comparing Herbert’s deal to the one signed by Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson. He gets a straight, five-year, $260 million deal, worth a true $52 million per year.

     

    Some would say it’s irrelevant, because Jackson had to play out of his rookie contract before he got paid. But if Herbert had done the same, he surely would have gotten more than $52.5 million per year on a five-year deal signed in 2025.

    The broader truth continues to be that “extensions” aren’t really extensions. They don’t kick in when the current deal ends. The prior deal is torn up, and a new deal takes its place. For Herbert, it’s a seven-year, $296.234 million contract.

    With it, Herbert got financial security now in exchange for a lower APY than he would have gotten in two years. Along the way, however, he would have carried the risk of injury or sudden ineffectiveness, like Jackson did in 2021 and 2022.

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  9. Random 2023 Bengals related stuff

    in THE BENGALS FORUM - For Bengals Fans *Only*

    Posted

    Article in the Athletic on Adam Jones and Chris Henry's kids:

     

    How Pacman Jones, NFL poster boy for bad behavior, stepped in for fallen teammate’s family

    Zak Keefer
    Jun 26, 2023

    46

    After the strip clubs and the suspensions, after the man who drafted him sixth overall called him “nothing but a disaster off the field,” after two NFL teams gave up on him, the CFL decided he wasn’t worth the headache and he flunked what he figured was his last chance at pro football, Adam “Pacman” Jones stood inside the tunnel at Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati, overweight and out of shape, his hamstrings screaming, his career in peril, and cried.

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    It was all slipping away, and Jones knew it. This mid-winter workout for the Bengals in early 2010 after a year in football exile felt like his last shot.

    He needed a job.

    Jones had become the NFL’s poster boy for bad behavior, arrested or questioned by police in eight separate incidents since being drafted in 2005, including a 2007 shooting outside a Las Vegas nightclub that left a man paralyzed and cost Jones $11 million in damages. He was brash, boastful and admittedly immature — “I was just being rebellion,” he once famously said — perpetually flirting with trouble and often finding it. At one point, the first defensive player taken in the 2005 draft was suspended 22 of a possible 28 games.

    So the Bengals offered him a workout and nothing more. Jones arrived in terrible shape and pulled both hamstrings, limping off the field in frustration. He stood in the tunnel afterward with coach Marvin Lewis, tears streaming down his face, and begged for another shot. “I’ll do whatever it takes,” Jones said. “I’ll live in one of those stadium suites if I have to. I’ll come in and compete with the rookies for a job …”

    Lewis stopped him. “Adam, you need to get in shape,” the coach told him. “Then maybe we’ll revisit this.”

    It sure seemed like it was over. Too many mistakes. Too much baggage. Pacman Jones had once been worth the risk, his ability too great to ignore. No more.

    “Hell yeah, it was close to going sideways,” he says now.

    To that point, his play had never been the problem. He was a competitive freak steeled by a hardscrabble past, a product of the Atlanta projects, 8 years old when his father was killed in front of him, 10 when his mother went to prison on drug charges. He brawled every day in middle school, picking fights incessantly, and years later, that aggression, that bitterness, bled its way onto the football field, where he played without an ounce of fear.

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    Pacman — the nickname his mother gave him because he changed directions so quickly as a toddler — craved the inherent violence of the game. He was most at home amid the chaos.

     
     
    Jones was selected by the Titans with the No. 6 pick in the 2005 draft after a standout college career at West Virginia. (Scott Groves / Associated Press)

    His hunger was contagious. Coaches came to love it. At West Virginia, Jones would bait and badger teammates who’d coast during drills, driving them crazy. One happened to be a lanky, soft-spoken wide receiver from Louisiana dripping in talent but short on drive. Everyone called him Slim, and Pac antagonized him mercilessly.

    “Man, I worked his ass every day,” Jones remembers. “Until finally, one day, it just clicked.”

    Slim took off. Pac, too. They warred every day in practice, refusing to go against anyone else in 1-on-1s. They became best friends — “brothers brothers,” Jones says. They lifted the Mountaineers into contention, made it to the league, then almost blew it. Arrests. Altercations. Shootings. Suspensions. So much promise nearly squandered by so much irresponsibility.

    One of them turned it around. The other never got the chance.

    Which is why, a little over a decade later, when Jones saw Slim’s two boys growing into their own without their father there to guide them — and starting to garner some serious attention from college programs — he knew they needed a voice in their ear. He’d stayed in touch over the years, checking in with their mother and hauling the boys to football camps, sending them endless boxes of Nike and Under Armour gear.

    Still, he told himself, Slim would’ve wanted more. So Pac called.

    “Y’all need to uproot and move up here with us,” he urged Loleini Tonga, the boys’ mother. “We’ll help you out.”

    So that’s what they did. Pacman Jones, once the NFL’s cautionary tale for reckless behavior, made Chris Henry’s family part of his own. They moved in with him in Cincinnati, where he drives the boys to school and picks them up after practice, where he trains them in the offseason, where he pushes Slim’s two sons the same way he once pushed their father, passing on the lessons learned from the opportunity they both almost threw away.

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    “I’ll tell you this,” Jones says, getting a bit heated. “I’ll be damned if these kids make the same mistakes I did.”

    The questions come from time to time, mostly about football.

    “What was my dad like to guard?” Chris Jr. will ask.

    Uncle Pac can only smile. “Honestly? A lot like you.”

    The resemblance is unmistakable. That easy smile. Those soft hands. The way Chris Jr. tracks the deep ball, smooth and effortless, without any wasted motion. His long, lean build — he’s pushing 6-foot-6 and 190 pounds entering his sophomore year of high school — and his reserved, soft-spoken nature.

    “The way he talks, the way he walks, the way he runs, it’s a spitting image,” Jones says. “If you go watch big Chris’ film, then watch little Chris’ film — man, it spooks you a bit.”

    “It’s eerie,” echoes Rich Rodriguez, who coached Jones and Henry at West Virginia. “You watch him play, and it’s like watching Slim all over again.”

    Chris Jr. is a straight-A student who was piling up scholarship offers before he played a game of high school football; he’s currently among the top-ranked wide receivers in the Class of 2026. His options include Ohio State, Michigan, Georgia, USC and his father’s alma mater, West Virginia. Kali Jones, his coach at Withrow High School, says multiple coaches from high-major programs have Henry projected as a Top-10 NFL draft pick whenever he declares.

    “I actually think he’s gonna be better than his dad,” Jones says. “He’s a generational talent.”

    “He’s more of a physical specimen right now than his dad was as a college player,” adds Rasheed Marshall, the former WVU quarterback who connected with Henry for 22 touchdowns in their two seasons together.

    “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a kid track the deep ball like him,” Jones says. “He’s more skilled than me and his dad were at his age.”

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    The boys moved in two years ago, and Jones and his wife Tishana later signed custodial papers to become their guardians. Chris Jr. goes by Man-Man. His younger brother DeMarcus, a budding basketball talent who’s already 6-3 heading into his freshman year — “Think Brandon Ingram,” Kali Jones says. “Really long. Really skilled. Gonna end up being 6-7 or 6-8.” — answers to Bubba. Their older sister, Seini, is headed to Ohio State on a hoops scholarship. Adding in Jones’ four children, the group is seven deep, and all have flashed considerable athletic potential.

    The house is crowded. Mornings start early. At first, the 6:30 a.m. wake-up calls hit Chris Jr. and DeMarcus like a brick wall, but Uncle Pac wouldn’t budge. Chris Jr. hated it. He’d complain, day after day. Now he’s the first one up, usually around 5:45 a.m., anxious for his early workout.

    Jones lined them up with a local trainer, and they spend the bulk of their offseasons at the gym he opened, J24 Athletic Complex, in the Cincinnati suburb of Amelia. Summers are a grind.

    “You can’t get better without running routes,” Jones preaches to Chris Jr. So that’s what they do, for a full hour, twice a day, all summer long. Then they lift. Then they catch from the Jugs machine. Then they pore through tape.

    “The routine don’t stop,” Jones says. “This ain’t something we came up with overnight.”

    Easing up isn’t Pacman’s style. He wouldn’t do it with Slim in college, wouldn’t do it during his 12 years in the NFL, and he won’t do it with the teenage boys he’s brought into his home. When he lines up opposite Chris Jr. on the practice field, Jones won’t yield an inch. No easy catches. No room to breathe.

    “Hell no!” he’ll shout. “Nothing free with me!”

    He likes to bark. Chris Jr. likes to work in silence. And every once in a while, the long and lean 15-year-old college prospect will slip past the 39-year-old former pro and snag one down the sideline, never muttering a word.

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    Jones can only shake his head.

    “Damn, boy,” he’ll say in between breaths. “You just like your dad.”

    Five months after he showed up out of shape, pulled both hamstrings and begged Marvin Lewis for another chance, the Bengals gave Pacman Jones one last tryout. He saved his career. “One of the best workouts I’ve ever seen in my life,” Lewis says.

    Jones lasted eight years in Cincinnati. He was first-team All-Pro as a punt returner in 2014 and a Pro Bowl cornerback a year later. A career that had long teetered on the brink of collapse, sabotaged by Jones’ decisions, finally stabilized.

    More than that, he flourished.

    “Always told myself I’d get the last laugh,’” he says proudly.

    Chris Henry never got to see it. They’d been on similar paths since they arrived in Morgantown in the early 2000s, two naïve teenagers with some hard lessons awaiting them. Jones got in a fight his freshman year, accused of hitting another student with a pool cue at a bar. A week later, Rodriguez called him into his office. “You can have a great future, or you can screw it all up,” the coach told him. “I’m not gonna play around with you.”

    Jones sat there silently, nodding with every word. The staff never had another issue with him. He became an honor roll student, an All-American defensive back and a lethal punt returner, playing with a fire that sparked the entire team.

    “I loved coaching him because he could take coaching,” Rodriguez says now. “Some guys you get on hard and they just go into a shell and don’t respond. He wanted every challenge.”

    Henry was different — more reserved, more insular. Harder to read. Harder to coach.

    Early on, he barely spoke. “Chris would say nothing, and I’m not sure he really liked practice,” Rodriguez says. “But he was so, so talented.”

    “Reminded me of Randy Moss,” Jones adds.

    He’d take plays off. He’d take entire practices off. Rodriguez’s run-first, spread offense required every receiver to finish their blocks through the whistle, but Henry would loaf, faking his way through workouts, irritating coaches to no end. Rodriguez threw him out of a couple of practices, and once, a film session.

    “The one piece that Chris was missing was that come-to-work dynamic,” Marshall remembers.

    But Jones was always there, always pushing and prodding. He couldn’t stand the idea of taking a rep off, so he let Henry hear it. Jones made his life miserable. “When you have one guy at 100, and another who’s at 25, they’re gonna clash,” Marshall remembers. “Those two had their moments.”

    Rodriguez had to halt more than a few practices.

    “And it wasn’t just Chris,” Marshall adds with a laugh. “Pacman got into it with every single person on the offensive side of the ball.”

    Henry had to learn, had to grow, and it was Jones who helped him realize his talent. In their last year in Morgantown, the Mountaineers climbed to as high as sixth in the country.

     
     
    Henry caught 15 touchdowns over his first two NFL seasons but missed 20 games due to suspension or injury over his final three seasons. (Chris Graythen / Getty Images)

    The two went 77 spots apart in the 2005 draft, Jones to the Titans in the first round, Henry to the Bengals in the third. Jones flamed out in Tennessee, then Dallas. Henry damn near did the same thing in Cincinnati, routinely testing — and exhausting — the franchise’s patience. He was arrested on five separate occasions, and at one point, suspended indefinitely by commissioner Roger Goodell.

    Lewis tried. Over and over. Before a game in Pittsburgh during Henry’s rookie season, the coach pulled his young wideout aside, reminding him how close Heinz Field was to Morgantown. This wasn’t going to be your typical road game, he warned.

    “The fans are gonna be on you. You need to maintain your composure.”

    “I got you, coach,” Henry assured him.

    Thirty seconds later, terrible towels waving, fans howling, Henry was giving them the finger.

    For Lewis, at times, it was maddening.

    “Look, if football is important to you, you can’t do these things,” he told Henry once or twice, maybe a dozen times.

    The most remarkable layer to Chris Henry’s story, his former coach says, was the transformation. The immaturity that dogged his early years in the league started to fade after he met Loleini. They were planning their wedding during Henry’s fifth season.

    But then there was an argument on Dec. 16, 2009, about how much to spend. Chris wanted to keep things modest. Loleini got in the truck and started to drive off; Henry jumped in the back, then toppled out. The injuries he sustained — blunt force trauma to the head — cost him his life.

    He was just 26, with three kids at home — Chris Jr. was 2 — and half his career still in front of him.

    “Broke my heart,” Rodriguez says.

    “Just devastating,” adds Marshall.

    “Everybody was crushed,” Jones says. “How could you not be?”

    Chris Jr. wears No. 1, DeMarcus No. 5, an ode to their father’s No. 15.

    Jones watches Chris Jr.’s games from the bleachers, trying to bite his tongue, often failing.

    “It’s hard to stay f— quiet,” he says with a laugh.

    On the basketball court, he sees DeMarcus’ stock climbing this summer, much like his brother’s did on the football field. Jones linked DeMarcus up with a more prominent AAU team after the boys landed in Cincinnati, betting the bigger exposure will pay off.

    “He’s been one of the top 20 players at his age in the country since he was 11 or 12 years old,” Jones brags.

    Lewis says he gets a half-dozen calls a year from former players and their wives raving about the week their son spent working with Jones at J24. The longtime Bengals coach, who was in Cincinnati for Henry’s tumultuous run and untimely death as well as Jones’ late-career revival, attended Jones’ wedding in 2014. He looked around and saw who was there, then weighed what it said about a man who’d finally, finally, finally gotten out of his own way.

    Jones’ high school teammates and lifelong friends were all on hand, the community Pacman refused to leave behind. Coaches from every stop, Jones’ father figures since he was a teenager. Both the Titans’ and Cowboys’ directors of security, the men tasked with keeping him out of trouble during his first two NFL stops. Jones didn’t last more than two seasons with either team.

    “Here’s the thing about Pacman Jones that not enough people know,” Rodriguez says. “He’s got the biggest heart you could possibly have.”

    He also has a story, muddied by his own mistakes, that he wants his children — needs them — to learn from. Being rebellion nearly cost him everything. He hides nothing. “Visit the past,” he’ll tell them, “but don’t stay in the past.”

     
     
    Jones made the most of his second chance with the Bengals, playing in 100 games over eight seasons with Cincinnati. (George Gojkovich / Getty Images)

    Jones recently admitted on Shannon Sharpe’s show, “Unfiltered,” that he was diagnosed as bipolar in 2015 but refused medication until he retired in 2019 because didn’t want it affecting his play. “I did have anger issues,” he said. “And still do sometimes.”

    “We all know the things I went through,” Jones says, looking back on all of it. “Our house, it’s a glass house. It’s all out there. I got the respect of the youth because I made my mistakes, took it on the chin and bounced back way harder.

    “They understand they can’t do what I did. It’s not gonna happen. The bullsh– I put myself in? No way.”

    That’s the message, hardened by the lessons he’s left with and what it nearly cost him. Pacman Jones’ story was never simple, and that’s why a man most might assume to be the worst role model for a pair of blossoming teenage athletes could be precisely what they need.

    “I don’t want no recognition. I don’t even want this story written,” Jones says. “I’m just so thankful I was able to help these kids out. Their dad would be proud of them.”

    Jones didn’t even tell his old coaches. Lewis found out from his son; Rodriguez heard from a former player. There’s a lot of talk of “family” around football programs, Rodriguez says, and most of the time, it’s nothing more than empty platitudes. Not in this case. “He’s doing this because he loved Chris and he loves those kids,” the coach says. “Nothing more.”

    Years ago, after the accident, when Pacman promised Loleini he’d do anything for Slim’s family, he meant it. In his mind, this wasn’t so much a decision as it was a duty. “Pac wouldn’t have felt right moving on in life unless he did this,” Marshall says.

    “Honestly, I treat them like I treat my own,” Pacman adds. “And I want all my kids to do better than I did, you know?

    “Don’t you?”

    • Like 3
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  17. Joe's next contract

    in THE BENGALS FORUM - For Bengals Fans *Only*

    Posted

    1 hour ago, sparky151 said:

    Hurts was already under contract for 2023 on his rookie deal. The new contract tacked 5 years on to that. If those numbers from Shefter are right, it's massively backloaded. It looks like they dropped his salary for this year from 4 mil to the minimum, as he got a 24 mil signing bonus. 

    Backloading makes sense when you consider how much the cap is expected to rise in the next few years. Plus the Eagles could also re-jig the contract in a few yeras to kicks the can even further. 

    • Upvote 1

  18. Joe's next contract

    in THE BENGALS FORUM - For Bengals Fans *Only*

    Posted

    5 minutes ago, PatternMaster said:

     

    It's been reported that the Ravens offered him a similar deal with more in guarantees and he turned it down, he's looking for a fully guaranteed deal..which the owner of the Ravens has been very publicly vocal about not giving anyone a deal like that..he even openly bashed the Browns owners for doing so. 

     

    It's a game of chicken, and Lamar will lose leverage if the Ravens trade up and draft Anthony Richardson. 

    Not much of a game anymore since NO team offerred him a contrcat while he was shopping himself. He has little leverage. 

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