What the Bengals decide to do with Joe Mixon will be interesting to see how it plays out. Clearly Mixon is a great offensive weapon and when there is little room for a play he seems to still make it. In 2019 he finished strong as the offensive line figured it out a little more. His play is consistent and he can both run and catch. A lot of people say that running backs are a dime a dozen and unless you have a very special one then their value is not there.
So who is special? I would say McCaffrey, Zeke and Barkley are special enough to really lock them down. They are what Adrian Peterson was at his peak; game changers for their team and handles the bulk of the offense. So where does that put Mixon? I think Mixon is great but I wouldn’t put him in that class of three. I think he is better than Le’Veon Bell, Austin Ekeler and Melvin Gordon. I say these names because we need to assess financial value. Mixon will carry a large cap hit if he is re-signed so how much are we looking at.
Spotrac has a list of all RB salaries here. If we remove McCaffrey, Zeke and Barkley and say Mixon is the best of that next tier then I can see his contract looking like: 4 years, $14M/year, $27M guaranteed. By cutting Andy Dalton we could use that $17M saved and front load Mixon’s contract as bonus money to lower his yearly cap hit but I know that Mike Brown doesn’t like to hand out money early. This is also a high risk position for injury and is not a safe bonus money bet.
The other option is to let Mixon walk in 2021 and rely on Bernard, Williams and Anderson. If healthy that could be an excellent running back room that can both run and catch. The “if healthy” is the biggest problem because Rodney Anderson has a lot of injury issues. Williams came out his junior year from Texas Tech where he was all-SEC but at 5’8″ he is a small shift guy like Bernard and not a bruiser back for a change of pace. It is likely that if Mixon walks then the Bengals go early in the draft to replace him.
I would like to see Mixon return but the Bengals need to get it done this year and be creative with how he counts against the cap beyond 2021. The Bengals are going to start winning and players will want to join Joe Burrow. We need to make sure we have the cap space to handle that especially if we need to invest in expensive linemen and linebackers.