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The Cincinnati Bengals have used the 2020 Senior Bowl to be quite open with fans as Zac Taylor and Co. head into Year 2 with the first pick in the draft.

And one of those topics of discussion predictably centered on how the team behaved from a personnel standpoint in the middle of the season.

Written another way, outside observers wondered why the Bengals didn’t sell off some talent at the trade deadline.

Here’s the answer straight from Bengals director of player personnel Duke Tobin, courtesy of Geoff Hobson of Bengals.com:

“We are not trying to get better by losing our best players. In our opinion, that’s not the path forward. Lose your best players, how do you get better by doing that? We have guys who clearly some teams were interested in. Well guess what? We are interested in having them, too. They are good players. We weren’t good enough as a football team. Now if we’re going to lose players, how does that improve us? I don’t think any of those (veterans) are done. We think all those guys have life in their NFL career and are going to be a part of our turnaround as we go.”

It’s a blunt enough answer. While Tobin has also commented in Mobile about how they “earned” the top overall pick, it appears the front office was reluctant to earn more assets in the way of draft picks by trading away veteran talent.

Fair enough, though outsiders might disagree with the approach. Veterans such as A.J. Green and Tyler Eifert could have potentially fetched nice prices on the trade market — now they could leave for no immediate return as free agents. And uncomfortable as it might sounds, wiggling out of bigish contracts like those belonging to aging veterans such as Geno Atkins, Dre Kirkpatrick and even Andy Dalton could’ve made some sense.

But the Bengals clearly see it differently, something they indicated while remaining in a holding pattern despite the worst start in franchise history.

The idea continues to be retaining their own and hoping it leads to contention instead of stockpiling assets, though whether even that works will hinge on whether the front office can now keep key free agents like Green aboard this offseason.

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