INDIANAPOLIS – Cincinnati Bengals player personnel director Duke Tobin didn’t shut down the possibility of trading backup quarterback AJ McCarron in the offseason.
Tobin said they’re not actively seeking to move McCarron, but he welcomed any team to call him if they had a reasonable offer.
“The phones in our office work,” Tobin said. “They always work. I’ve got an interest in listening to any of you that want to talk.”
He added later: “We’re not actively looking to diminish our football team by trading AJ McCarron and that diminishes our football team. It has to be something we feel is valuable enough to warrant doing that. What it is, I don’t know. Who it is to, I don’t know. It’s not ideal to trade guys within your division, particularly at that position. But we listen.”
Tobin implied it would take a strong offer for the Bengals to trade McCarron, who started three regular season games in 2015 and the AFC wildcard loss to the Steelers that season while filling in for an injured Andy Dalton.
“The larger point on AJ McCarron for us is he’s a very valuable piece of what we do,” Tobin said. “It’s not a point where we’re saying, ‘What do we do with this guy? We don’t have a plan for him.’ There is a plan in place for us. He plays a very valuable position and you’re always one play away from going to your backup quarterback. We view our team as a team that can challenge.”
The Bengals had received inquiries about McCarron in the past, but none warranted serious consideration, Tobin said.
“We talk to teams all the time. I talk to my colleagues around the league about their teams and they talk to us about their teams,” he said. “Those are conversations that are part of our regular working environment, not just in regards to AJ. But I would be lying to you if I told you there was never any interest from other teams. We don’t advertise that. Obviously there wasn’t enough interest at a high enough level that we thought it was worth pursuing.”
The Bengals carried three quarterbacks on the active roster in 2016 after claiming Jeff Driskel off waivers, presumably to have a backup plan in case McCarron did get traded. McCarron, drafted in the fifth round of the 2014 draft, technically has one year left on his rookie deal, although the Bengals could have his rights for up to two more seasons because he did not spend enough time on the active roster as a rookie to accrue a year toward free agency.
“I think that’s still to be determined,” Tobin said. “Ultimately those types of things are always determined by arbitrators at some point. We do know that we have him for one more year and that’s valuable, and it’s a second year, hopefully we can come to some sort of agreement to have him here longer … again, we’re in the AJ McCarron business. He’s a good player for us. He’s proven valuable, he elevates our offense, even when he’s not on the field by the way that he works…
“There is some debate as to whether he earned a season the first year and that is the crux of the debate. We want to be respectful of his position and ultimately like I said it will be decided by somebody other than AJ and somebody other than the Cincinnati Bengals.
