Cincinnati Bengals Xtra: Extension? Darqueze Dennard willing to gamble In this week's Bengals Xtra, Darqueze Dennard discusses his thoughts on a possible contract extension; the Bengals hone in on the supplemental draft and Ohio misses out on a new football league.

Jim Owczarski | Cincinnati Enquirer

Show Caption Hide Caption Cincinnati Bengals 2018 mini camp wrap up Enquirer beat writers Paul Dehner Jr. and Jim Owczarski break down their top observations from Cincinnati Bengals mini camp.

It’s July, the one month of downtime collectively bargained for National Football League front offices, coaches and players. But the work never quite stops. There will be a supplemental draft held on July 11 and there are talks between clubs and agents about extensions.

The Cincinnati Bengals set an artificial deadline for extensions at Week 1 of the regular season. In 2015, for instance, A.J. Green signed his deal just before the team boarded the buses to depart for Oakland. Geno Atkins signed his last extension six days before the 2013 season opener.

Others, like Shawn Williams (May, 2016), Giovani Bernard (June, 2016), Carlos Dunlap (July, 2013), Andy Dalton (August, 2014) and Ryan Hewitt (August, 2016) get done before or during training camp.

Looking ahead to the rest of this month and the next, the team has a handful of players on their extension list. Atkins and Dunlap top it, understandably.

Then there’s Darqueze Dennard.

The corner, who turns 27 in October, is also in a contract year and is playing under his fifth-year option.

In reality it is his best – and perhaps only – opportunity at a big contract, one that will carry him into his early 30s.

And he knows it. But he’s vowing to not let it consume him.

“It’s not a thought at all,” Dennard told The Enquirer. “I’m just focused on football and trying to be the best Darqueze Dennard I can be, be the best football player I can be and help the team win. I mean, I’m not too much worried about contracts. That will figure itself out.”

A first-round pick out of Michigan State in 2014, Dennard is one of the more interesting financial decisions the Bengals front office must make.

Dennard came into a position room that included former first-round picks Leon Hall, Adam Jones, Terence Newman and Dre Kirkpatrick. Needless to say, it wasn’t a surprise Dennard only played 62 defense snaps as a rookie.

In 2015, Newman departed but Dennard was slowed early due to injuries in training camp. Kirkpatrick and Jones locked up starting positions on the outside while Hall shifted inside. Dennard played 189 defensive snaps before having his year ended prematurely due to a shoulder injury.

Hall left after that season and the club selected corner William Jackson III in the first round – but injuries again slowed Dennard again in 2016 and he played 334 snaps.

It led to questions about whether the club would pick up Dennard’s fifth-year option for 2018, but the front office believed in his ability and wasted little time in doing so. He repaid their faith by playing the second-most defensive snaps on the team (901), largely in the slot.

Not surprisingly, he posted career highs in forced fumbles (1), interceptions (2), sacks (2), passes defensed (6), solo (61) and total tackles (85).

“I think a lot of people was thinking ‘why?’ I haven’t done anything, I’ve been hurt. Why would they pick it up?” Dennard said of the noise surrounding the team picking up the option.

“But obviously they seen somethin’ and it just so happened I had a solid year last year, played all 16 games and I think I did pretty well. I think it kind of goes to that same mantra. If you do what you’re supposed to do, just be professional about things, everything will work out on its own.”

That “everything,” for this year at least, is the huge bump in pay he received with the option. If you were to slot in Dennard’s $8.526 million total for this season into www.overthecap.com’s average annual value list, he would rank as the 21st highest paid corner in the league.

He is drawing the seventh-highest salary on the Bengals this season.

It’s a nice baseline to start at.

And it is also good problem for the Bengals to have, and one they expected when they picked Dennard No. 24 overall in 2014.

The team believes premier talent at premier positions must be found in the first round, and cover corners are just that. The Bengals not only spend the draft capital on it, but are more than willing to pay to retain them:

2011: Hall reached an extension before the season began in early September, inking a four-year, $39 million deal.

This extension came after the Bengals lost a former first-round corner to free agency in Johnathan Joseph, who elected to bolt to Houston for five years and $48.75 million.

2016: Jones tested free agency before re-signing on three-year, $22 million deal. Included in that, however, was a third-year team option in 2018 for $6 million. (That option was not picked up this offseason, so Jones essentially signed a two-year, $16 million deal.)

2017: Kirkpatrick hit free agency but also re-signed at five years and $52.4 million. He is the only veteran Bengal currently under contract through 2021.

“I’ve seen it, but for me, I don’t pay attention to it,” Dennard said of the team paying to retain its cornerbacks. “That’s what a lot of people try to get caught up in. With me, I was always told if you do what you’re supposed to everything will work out.”

With Jackson III already looking like a Pro Bowler, the question is this – what is Dennard’s value to the Bengals? Especially since Dennard strongly believes, and began to prove to the league, that he can cover on the outside.

It’s a question he’s curious to hear the answer to.

But when it comes to whether he’d entertain a conversation about an extension before free agency begins in March, 2019, Dennard was blunt in his response:

“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s something that I think me and my agent and my family will have to sit down and talk about. But I mean, when that time come, the time come. I’m not pressed on it. I’ve got some goals that I have personally that I gotta work on, on the football field.”

Then a smile turned up.

“You know how defensive backs is anyway – we like to gamble. So I’m not too much sure how I feel any way about it.”

Supplemental update

BX theorized in early June that the Bengals would be interested in the talent available in the supplemental draft, which has now been set for July 11. The club is doing its due diligence on the defensive backs and weighing all scenarios as they are players who would have had draftable grades. The Bengals must weigh the following elements before deciding on making a move to draft a player:

Who would be cut off the current 90-man roster to make room?

Does he have a legitimate chance to compete despite missing the entire offseason program?

Is he worth forfeiting the corresponding 2019 selection?

If so, how high of a pick is he worth?

Here's an update on how the process works, too. The draft isn't as straightforward as April's, as it's a weighted system - think NBA lottery. So the Bengals may not necessarily end up with the 12th pick. They could be 10th, or 15th. The teams won't know until they are contacted by the league with the draft order.

BX has learned the Bengals have seen two of the players: Western Michigan corner Sam Beal and Virginia Tech defensive back Adonis Alexander.

Ohio misses out on AAF

The Alliance of American Football (AAF) is smartly positioning itself as a complement to the NFL by beginning it's season immediately after the Super Bowl on Feb 9, 2019, and concluding it draft weekend -- but that meant Ohio had to be flown over when it came to awarding franchises in its inaugural campaign in 2019.

"It became a weather issue," said AAF co-founder and Hall of Fame general manager Bill Polian told BX. "We wanted to give our guys the best opportunity to go to the NFL. If you can partake in OTAs then you have a really good chance to make the team and the NFL is interested is having you in camp. If you can't, because you have to start the season in March for weather reasons, then you become less attractive to the NFL. We thought that our start date was the appropriate start date, so that takes you to a situation where in this day and age with extreme weather conditions all over the place it seems, you're driven to either indoor facilities or areas where the climate is much more temperate than it is in the Midwest."

Polian said the league would love to get into the Midwest, but for now the league is content with its footprint in southern and western locales. Front offices and coaching staffs for the eight teams are still rounding into shape, but even though there isn't a Midwest team don't be surprised to see if some former Bengals players or coaches turn up.

"Our emphasis is quite heavily on people with former NFL or CFL experience because we want to get these guys ready to play professional football," Polian said. "So, we have not dealt with a lot of people from the college ranks but from the NFL side of things, CFL side of things, quite a few."