With the Bengals set to open training camp Wednesday, Monday’s annual training camp media luncheon at Paul Brown Stadium found them dealing with issues usually facing Super Bowl teams.
In one of his rare media appearances during the year, Bengals president Mike Brown talked about harnessing his young team’s popularity and the challenge of keeping it together under the NFL salary cap.
With monstrous contracts rolling in for quarterbacks and wide receivers, Brown said his father would agree with the decision to sell the naming rights to Paul Brown Stadium.
“He was always for what’s best for the football team,” said Mike Brown of the Bengals founder. “It’s a time now where we need a revenue stream that will help us as do such things as build the indoor facility. It’ll help us perhaps handle the cap a little bit easier.
“We’re a small-market team. We need the revenue streams that we can obtain. The fact that about 30 teams have naming rights and a revenue stream from that and they have more revenue than we do to begin with. We have to do some things just to keep up.”
Foremost in everyone’s mind is the impending contract for Joe Burrow. “We see that train coming,” said Brown of a schedule that calls for Burrow to be eligible for a new deal at the end of the season.
But he’s all for getting on board a trip that includes Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, the $40 million-per-year man Burrow took down twice in a month to get to the Super Bowl.
“I like what Mahomes said,” Brown said. “He wasn’t bothered by all those big quarterback contracts that came after his because he had enough to set him up for a lifetime anyway. I can’t tell you how this is going to unfold. I can tell you that we couldn’t be happier with Joe Burrow. He’s everything you would wish for, especially for a quarterback in Cincinnati. Our whole focus is going to be on keeping him here.”
The Super Bowl certainly gave the Bengals a boost to sign not only Burrow, but wide receiver Tee Higgins. He’s also eligible…
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