Bengals release "star" offensive linesman

Offensive tackle Cordy Glenn was released by the struggling Cincinnati squad yesterday and some fans were surprised to find out that the release managed to free up nearly $10 million in salary cap for the Bengals.

Let's make no mistake here: The Bengals are terrible. Their past season was one for the record books for all the wrong reasons. Finishing with a record of 2-14 almost all of their stats are near the end of the 32 team roster of the entire NFL. One could rather successfully argue that one of those 2 wins came to them only because the season was already over for them and one of their final opponents, the Cleveland Browns. At that point it was just a question of who wanted it less and it turned out the Browns didn't care anymore. Their other victory came mid season against the Jets, a team that managed to somehow eek out a few wins despite having lower stats across the board. These wins can almost certainly be attributed entirely to Le'Veon Bell.

It was a tough season for fans, who still managed to turn up for depressing home games in reasonable numbers. This is presumably because there really isn't much else to do in Cincinnati.

As far as Cordy Glenn is concerned, it is really rare for such a high-profile and highly-paid member of a team to simply be released rather than traded. After a bunch of rumors and deals that fell through, the Bengals could not find a trade partner for Glenn, who has also become known as a bit "difficult to deal with" as far as his attitude is concerned. On at least one occasion he was fined by his own team for "internal disciplinary reasons" and this may have contributed to the lack of concern over not getting anything back for their investment.

Glenn was hired to protect the quarterback, and you could argue that he was doing a better job than many others on the offensive line for the Bengals. The main issue is that if we were to look at efficiency compared to salary, Glenn simply wasn't cutting it. Stack on the disciplinary problems and there probably weren't many tears shed during his release.

Now the Bengals just need to release about 60% of the rest of their roster.