Atkins deal gives Bengals their most expensive team
bengals.com

CINCINNATI- The Bengals are expected to announce before their Labor Day practice a mega contract extension in excess of $50 million for Geno Atkins that keeps the two-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle in Cincinnati for the next six seasons.

Indications are Atkins is to sign the deal before the club takes its team photo. Pro Football Talk reported it as a five-year, $55 million extension.

Atkins, 25, regarded by many as the best three technique in football, led tackles in sacks last season and is on a pace similar to 2013 Pro Football Hall of Famer Warren Sapp. Sapp had 96.5 sacks in 198 games (.487 per game) during his 13 seasons and Atkins has 23 in his first 48 (.479) in three seasons. That would give him 95 in 198 games.

With the Bengals opening their season in Chicago this Sunday, the Atkins deal makes it the most valuable photo shoot in franchise history and caps their offseason moves in which they committed more than $180 million in total dollars in either free agency or re-signing their own players.

Atkins joins his 2010 classmate in the fold six weeks after left end Carlos Dunlap signed a $40 million extension, and with right end Michael Johnson the $11 million franchise player, the Bengals have what is believed to be the highest paid defensive line in the NFL with nose tackle Domata Peko at about $5 million per year and backup ends Robert Geathers and Wallace Gilberry at about $3 million per year.

Atkins, Geathers, and Gilberry are all repped by the Atlanta firm headed by Pat Dye Jr. Dye and Bengals executive vice president Katie Blackburn hammered out what is being characterized as the second highest defensive tackle deal in history. Ravens nose tackle Haloti Ngata signed a 5- year, $61 million extension in 2011.

Atkins gets $18 million this season, $22 million over the first six months of the new deal and $36 million in new money over the first three years of the extension.

That means the Bengals have spent about $140 million in cash this season over the $123 million salary cap. The Atkins' extension is the first part of a plan designed to keep their back-to-back playoff team intact in the face of some huge signings. They rolled about $10 million from this year's cap into next year's cap, their first shot at re-signing two-time Pro Bowl wide receiver A.J. Green and quarterback Andy Dalton and while Atkins may have carved into it some they've got the first piece secured.

The Atkins negotiations took months and while there were some serious lulls, the sides never stopped communicating. It looked like they had stalled out in June and even as late as the Bengals' trip to Atlanta early last month the two sides didn't appear to be having substantive progress.

"We've been negotiating for months, but our dialouge really picked up these last few weeks," Dye said in a Monday morning statement. "The Bengals were ultimately very fair given Geno's alternative salary scenarios. Katie Blackburn and the Bengals organization deserve a lot of credit for being proactive in securing the long-term services of a great player, who is only 25 and still ascending.

"Geno is also an outstanding citizen and teammate and very deserving of this opportunity."