Bengals Looking For At Least A First-Round Pick For Backup QB A.J. McCarron

According to Ian Rapoport of NFL Media, it would take at least a first-round pick in order for the Bengals to trade backup QB A.J. McCarron.

With this in mind, Rapoport considers a McCarron trade to be “pretty unlikely.”

The Browns have come up as a potential landing spot for McCarron, given that they’re in need of a quarterback and Hue Jackson worked with McCarron a few years ago. However, Jim Owczarski reports that the Browns haven’t reached out to Cincinnati regarding McCarron as of a few weeks ago.

Bengals director of player personnel Duke Tobin mentioned last month that they would “listen” to trade offers for McCarron, but aren’t “actively looking” to move him.

“We’re not actively looking to diminish our football team by trading AJ McCarron and that diminishes our football team,” Tobin said. “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 and if something comes up we’ll certainly announce it to all you guys.”

One interesting note regarding McCarron that impacts his value is the fact that he will be a restricted free agent after the 2017 and not an unrestricted free agent. McCarron qualifies as a restricted free agent next year because he spent most of his rookie season on the non-football injury list.

McCarron, 26, is a former fifth-round pick of the Bengals back in 2014. He’ll be entering the final year of his four-year, $2,401,652 contract and stands to make a base salary of $690,000 for the 2017 season.

In 2015, McCarron appeared in seven games for the Bengals and completed 66.4 percent of his passes for 854 yards to go along with six touchdowns and two interceptions.

We’ll have more regarding McCarron’s future as the news is available.