“Cincinnati has been devoting resources to keeping their offensive core together and Pratt was close to DC Lou Anarumo, who was fired after last season,” Rapoport wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
Cincinnati for most of the 2024 season ranked among the bottom five defenses in the league, before finishing strong during a five-game winning streak, but the late turnaround wasn’t enough to save Anarumo’s job. Missed tackles were a major problem for much of the season, and Pratt wasn’t immune to that.
Still, Pratt led the Bengals with 143 tackles, while the next closest player in that category was Logan Wilson, who finished with 104 tackles in 11 games. Pratt also served as a defensive captain and wore the “green dot” when Wilson went down in Week 12 and finished the year on injured reserve.
Pratt has one more year left on his contract and is due $5.25 million in base salary, with a cap hit of $8,183,334. The Bengals would take on $2.3 million in dead money but save $5.85 million in cap space by cutting him, according to OverTheCap.com, which listed Pratt at No. 97 in its Top 100 Possible Cuts list.
Rapoport projected the Bengals would still have a market for Pratt, who played a key role in the team’s deep playoff runs in 2021 and 2022, should they decide to trade him and free up more cash to address other areas of the roster.
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