This just took an ABSOLUTELY Insane Turn... More Moves Coming?

This just took an absolutely insane turn for the Bengals. On Tuesday morning, the Bengals agreed to a trade for Eagles pass rusher Arnold Ebiketie. The reported price was a 2027 sixth-round pick, which is about as cheap as help gets in the middle of a season. But less than two hours later, Adam Schefter said that the deal was no longer happening. Philadelphia had already agreed to it and the Eagles were left holding a player that the whole league now knows they tried to move. But no one reported a failed physical and it wasn't Philadelphia changing its mind. The Bengals pulled out themselves over a draft pick formula and the person who flagged it doesn't even work for the team. So a 6-2 team with Joe Burrow playing at this level walked away from the exact player it went shopping for. So did the Bengals just pick a 2027 draft pick over the best shot at a title in years? Cincinnati woke up Tuesday tied with Pittsburgh at the top of the AFC North, both teams at 6-2. They had been looking for edge help for about a week ever since rookie Cassius Howell went on injured reserve. Howell had wrist surgery and he can't come back until week 13 at the earliest. They were willing to deal too. On November 1st, they checked in on Colts running back Jonathan Taylor and Indianapolis wouldn't move him. On Monday, Zach Taylor said the team had no trade moves planned. But I guess it shows how much Zach Taylor knows about the front office ongoings because by Tuesday morning Ian Rappaport had the Bengals sending a 2027 sixth round pick to Philadelphia for Ebiketie Ebiketie. Ebiketie came into the league as a second round pick in 2022 and has 16.5 career sacks across Atlanta and Philadelphia. He was playing on a one-year deal so for Cincinnati this was a rental for the stretch run, the kind of move a contender makes in November. For a team that needed a body on the edge, that's a real player for a pick that most teams forget that they own. Then Nick Corte of Over the Cap posted on X that the trade would cost Cincinnati its 2027 third round compensatory pick that they got for Trey Hendrickson. ESPN's Field Yates calls Corte the comp pick goat, and this is exactly the kind of thing that he tracks. Within two hours of the first report, the Bengals had called the whole thing off. Mike Garofalo reported that the Eagles were not happy about it and because the deal was never official Howie Roseman has no way to fight it. Philadelphia had already sent Jordan Davis to Jacksonville that week so Roseman was clearly selling veterans. There's even a family twist because Duke Tobin's son Duke Tobin Jr. works as a scout for the Eagles. Clarence Hill Jr. put it in three words on X. Bengals so unserious. The 4pm deadline came and went and the Bengals added nobody and Duke Tobin made himself look even worse. And that stings more once you see how close this division race really is. This video is brought to you by Kalshi and on Kalshi the AFC North Market has the Bengals at 63% to win the division with the Steelers at 31%. And on Kalshi you're trading directly against other users not the house like traditional sportsbooks. So you're buying yes or no contracts on the outcome of real life events across sports, politics, even the weather. If you are interested in trying out Kalshi, be sure to use the link in the description below as well as to pin comment and use code digest NFL to get $55 added to your account instantly when you trade your first $25. Now back to the pick, the Bengals decided they could not give up. So to understand how a sixth round trade ends up costing a third, you have to go back to March. Ebbe Kadisigned with Philadelphia as an unrestricted free agent on a one-year deal worth $4.3 million guaranteed. That makes him what the league calls a compensatory free agent and those players count in a formula that hands out extra draft picks. A team that loses more of them than it signs gets picks back the next spring as high as the third round. Those picks come out at the end of Of rounds three through seven on top of the team's own picks. The rule follows a contract, so when a team trades for one of these players, he counts for the team that gets him. And it cuts both ways, too. Signing Ebikedi in March had already cost the Eagles a sixth-round comp pick of their own. The biggest one Cincinnati lost this year was Trey Hendrickson, who signed with Baltimore. Hendrickson had 17.5 sacks in both 23 and 24, the two best sack seasons by any Bengals since 1999. And we've kind of gotten over the sting, but losing a player like that is what earns the Bengals a 2027 third-round pick. So for a sense of what a third round pick is worth, Hendrickson himself was a third round pick. Number 103 in 2017. So Cortez's math is simple. The Bengals lost three of those free agents and signed two. Trade for Ebikedi and it's three and three and the Hendrickson pick disappears. So the real price was a sixth and a third for a player whose deal runs out in March and really hasn't produced that much. The worst part is that the Bengals don't even seem to have known it until the post At least by Adam Leviton's read. And it's not the first time that Korte has caught something like this for them. In March of 2024, he noticed the Bengals had been shorted a third-round comp pick after Jesse Bates left, and the league fixed its own mistake. That's two different third-round picks saved for Cincinnati by someone outside of the building. And the pick is safe now, but what it cost Cincinnati this season is a different question. This 6-2 start is the best eight-game start of the Zach Taylor era. They've won four straight and they've scored 34 or more points in three of them. The defense has made it close though. Tennessee jumped out to a 13-0 lead on November 1st and the Bengals needed overtime to win 43-36. Burrow threw for 462 yards and five touchdowns that day and it still took an extra period. After the Atlanta win, Taylor said Joe is playing at an unbelievably high level right now, which, yeah. Real quick, we're sitting at 6,050 subscribers, so if Bengals news like this is the reason why you're here, hit subscribe, it's completely free. Now 6-2 looks fine from the top, but dig under it and the pass rush is the problem. Before the season, CBS ranked the Bengals edge group 29th out of 32. Boye Mafe leads the team with 5.5 sacks, and the next man up is Dexter Lawrence, a defensive tackle at 5. Now, to be fair, Miles Murphy led the team last year with five and a half. Now, if you remember, Hendrickson was the edge rusher that this whole defense used to be built around. But then they signed Boye Mafe. He was a big signing to replace Hendrickson on a three-year $60 million deal. But with Cassius Howell out, that's the hole they were trying to fill on Tuesday. Instead, the Bengals finished as one of the two AFC teams with six or more wins that made no move at the deadline. The other one is Pittsburgh, and the Steelers come to play court on Sunday night Pittsburgh won the first meeting 30-27 back in September, so Sunday decides who sits alone at the top of the division. To be fair to the front office, Ezekiel was not lighting it up in Philadelphia. He hasn't had a single sack in 9 games this year, playing 48% of the Eagles snaps. That's down from 6 sacks in Atlanta in 2024, and then 2 there in 2025. Paul Daner's case for him was his pass rush win rate, which is why his name came up so much in free agency. And this isn't the Isn't the first deadline that they stood still? Last year, they kept Hendrickson through the deadline and sent Logan Wilson to Dallas for a 7th round pick. Then, Hendrickson walked in free agency anyway, and the comp pick for him is the exact thing they protected on Tuesday. And now he lines up against them twice a year as a Raven. But that's what makes this so frustrating, is they wanted the player enough to agree on the deal, and then one rule killed it. But there is still another way to add a pass rusher, or Or I would argue more important the back seven That doesn't cost a single pick. The deadline shuts down trades, but it doesn't shut down free agency. A player who gets released doesn't count as a compensatory free agent for either team. And a free agent signed after the spring cutoff doesn't count in the formula at all. So, the Bengals can sign a veteran edge rusher this week and still keep the Hendrickson third. Every week of the season, teams release veterans to clear a roster spot, and once they clear waivers, any of them can sign to Cincinnati. That's how the Bengals can have it both ways. The pick in 2027, and a rusher for the stretch run. So that may be why they're walking away after 4 o'clock without panicking. No report has them close to signing anyone yet, so for now the edge room is Mafe, Cedric Johnson, Myles Murphy, and Shamar Stewart, with Howell on IR but to come. Stewart has barely played this year, which is why his name came up in trade talks in October. Howell is the other help on the way, but week 13 is three games after Sunday night. So unless someone gets cut and Cincinnati moves fast, Sunday's pass rush is the same one that's been there for eight games. So right call on the pick, but wrong way to get there. A 20-27 third is worth more than a rotation rusher on a one-year deal. But a 6-2 team cannot be learning its own comp math from X on deadline day. So I think they have a fix. Sign a veteran, a released veteran before the stretch, and it doesn't cost a pick. There's still names out there, Bobby Wagner being one of those. Watch week 13 when Howell can come back. And if Aaron Rodgers, the Pittsburgh quarterback, has all day to throw on Sunday night, then everybody's going to remember today and the debacle. So Sunday night against Pittsburgh is the first real test of whether standing still was the right call. So that's where it stands. No Evocati. The third is safe. And the edge room is the same one that's been there since Howell went down. So I'm curious, let me know down in the comments, was protecting that third round pick the right call or should the Bengals have made the Evocati trade anyway? I personally think they probably made the right move. I don't think Evocati is worth a third and a sixth. I'll see you guys in the next one.