Bengals, Joe Mixon could follow Aaron Jones’ lead with Packers
What feels like one of the most obvious offseason points for the Cincinnati Bengals is the departure of running back Joe Mixon.
Mixon’s cap hit north of $12 million in 2023 is simply too much in today’s NFL, especially for a team like the Bengals that needs to worry about big-ticket items like extensions for Joe Burrow and his receiving weapons.
That’s true of any running back, too. Aaron Jones just agreed to a massive pay cut that will allow him to stay with the Green Bay Packers. The team turned his massive signing bonus into a roster bonus, lessening the cap hit in 2023.
Jones is one of the game’s elite, having just rushed for a career-high 1,121 yards on a 5.3 average and caught 59 passes, his fourth season in a row with at least 47 catches.
Mixon just caught a career-high 60 passes, but his continued absence in critical situations because of his liabilities as a pass-blocker overrules almost any statistical output at this point.
Still, there’s value in retaining Mixon for the clear-cut importance he has to the locker room. But if the Bengals make him a post-June 1 cut, they save roughly $10 million against the cap — not an insignificant number for a team with a huge list of free agents and potentially wanting to sign a starting offensive lineman, for example.
The idea has always been to restructure Mixon’s cap hit if they don’t cut him and the Packers and Jones just provided a bit of a blueprint.
We’d be remiss not to mention Mixon’s recent off-field allegations but unless something further develops on that front, barring the team outright releasing him, a restructure remains a possibility.
