The Cincinnati Bengals just re-signed two of their best defensive players in DE Carlos Dunlap and 3-technique specialist, Geno Atkins. With both players ending up with sizable contracts (Dunlap with 3 yrs / $45 million and Atkins with 4 yrs / $65 million), it remains to be seen what happens to other Bengals on the verge of free agency.

Who will they realistically try to extend during the season, or even next offseason? There are some talented players whose contracts are up at the end of this season. Just to name a few, Tyler Eifert, Preston Brown, Darqueze Dennard, and even backup TE Tyler Kroft.

With that said, these are the 3 players the Bengals could re-sign after the re-up of Atkins and Dunlap (all players will be FA’s either this season or the next).

CB Darqueze Dennard

Darqueze Dennard started off his career in Cincinnati in very slow fashion. He sat behind starters his first season, and was then relegated to a backup position in his second season. Finally in his third season, he was given an opportunity to start at nickel corner, but shared time with Josh Shaw. Finally in 2017, he broke out and had a great season playing the third corner position for the Bengals, posting a respectable 77.4 Pro Football Focus grade which ranks 26th out of a possible 96 starting corners in the NFL. This puts him in the upper third tier of NFL CB’s.

Compare that to starting LCB Dre Kirkpatrick and his PFF rating of 63.5, ranking him 83rd out of 96 starting corners. I’m not trying to bash him, I like Dre. But at the end of the day, the team needs to cut ties with players who are grossly overpaid. Kirkpatrick is due to to make a little over 27 million over the next three years. Do you want to pay that much for a player who’s average at best?

My solution to this is to re-sign Dennard and cut ties with Kirkpatrick after this season. A veteran CB in FA could fill in for Kirkpatrick and do the same thing for a fraction of the money.

It just makes sense to resign Dennard as his stock is trending upwards. The Bengals as an organization put their energy and resources into turning him into the player he is today; if they allow another team to reap their benefits, I’ll go nuts.