Duke Tobin said it the week the season ended.

He said it last week to the cameras in Indianapolis at the NFL scouting combine.

He has said it off the podium and off the cuff, but never off message.

The Bengals want the defense to match the offense, and that plan figures to kick in Monday when NFL free agency starts with that phrase only a mother can love.

Legal tampering.

The Bengals can't announce deals until the start of the league year on Wednesday at 4 p.m., but they can craft contracts starting at noon Monday.

And if you don't like how it starts, wait for The Pivot. You won't have to wait long.

"We need more leadership," said Tobin of the defense a few days after the season. "We have tons of leadership on the offensive side of the ball. We need somebody, multiple people, to step up and lead that group from within our team. And it could come from the outside, and it could come from the inside."

There is a certain back and forth to all this, isn't there? In 2020 and 2021, the Bengals spent heavily on defense. Do the names Trey Hendrickson, DJ Reader, Vonn Bell, Mike Hilton and Larry Ogunjobi ring a bell?

After spending on offense the last three offseasons securing two of the biggest deals in NFL history to keep Pro Bowl quarterback Joe Burrow and wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase, as well as wide receiver Tee Higgins and tight end Mike Gesicki, while adding left tackle Orlando Brown Jr., the Bengals are prepared to go outside again to beef up the defense.

"We're going to look at all areas, and we're going to try to attack this offseason and fit our needs with the right people," Tobin said last week. "And that's what our focus is, and we're excited about it because we have resources to go out and do some things."

The resources come from cap space designated for re-tooling the defense in free agency, which they did leading up to consecutive AFC title game appearances. Tobin won't compare and says simply, "We're going to attack it."

The way they attacked it then provides a road map for how they may attack it next week. Not with one big swing, but adding to each level of the defense with:

- Ascending players on their second contacts. Such as they did with a future NFL sack champion in Hendrickson and a future locker room leader in Reader on the two biggest free-agent deals in team history, while adding future playoff heroes Hilton and Awuzie on the corner and Bell at safety.

- Veteran leaders and proven winners. Such as Josh Bynes, a 30-year-old linebacker mentor who won a ring with the Ravens. He came into a room coached by Al Golden a month before they drafted three rookie linebackers in 2020. Last week in Indy, Golden, now the defensive coordinator, indicated he wouldn't mind a veteran in the mix after starting rookie linebackers Barrett Carter and Demetrius Knight, Jr. last season.

- Second-chance haven. The Bengals love those guys with something to prove. Such as in 2021 free agency when they got a former 10^th pick in the draft in cornerback Eli Apple on a one-year deal with his fourth team. Apple emerged as a solid player for head coach Zac Taylor’s two AFC North title teams.

(Not to mention the midseason addition later that year of Tre Flowers, who played well down the stretch and in the postseason.)

The Bengals have a plan, and if things go to plan, so be it. But if not, then next Monday and Tuesday become Pivot Days.

No one knows exactly to the decimal point how the market is going to unfold. With assistant general managers Trey Brown and Steven Radicevic the point men in free agency, the Bengals have made some of their best moves on the run.

Take 2020, when they began free agency stalking linebackers Joe Schobert and Blake Martinez. When the backer market soared in a year it was a deep linebacker draft, the Bengals bounced on that first day and gave the money to Reader for what was then the NFL's highest contract for a nose tackle.

Three years later, months of planning were blown up when the four-time Pro Bowler Orlando Brown Jr. called "out of the blue," in the first hours of free agency to say he'd like to block for Burrow a month after winning it all blocking for Patrick Mahomes. His $64 million deal went down quicker than a Burrow slant for the highest free-agent deal in Bengals history.

With Hendrickson's imminent departure on the edge and improvement sought in the middle, the defensive line seems to be the story next week and beyond. Tobin watched his good friend John Schneider, the general manager of the Seahawks, bully his way to a Super Bowl title last month with one of the best.

"They had a physical front, and they had a wave of guys that kept coming through. And that's something every team wants," Tobin said last week. "You ask anybody in my position with any of the other teams, they want that defensive line, they want the wave. And we would like to get to the point where we have a couple different groups we can deploy in there, and keep them fresh and really get after the passer."

It's not a deep free-agent defensive tackle group, but could that be The Pivot? To the edge? To the back seven? Certainly, they look to be seeking a running mate at safety for Jordan Battle. At the combine, Golden outlined what that looks like.

"Maybe someone who can go into the slot and cover a little bit more, or feel better about certain matchups or whatever, or somebody that just really complements Jordan's skills," Golden said, "and maybe not somebody that's exactly like him. And if we can do that, obviously, I think we'll improve our defense."

Traditionally, the Bengals have been averse to 30-year-olds in free agency. But given the hunt for defensive leadership and the club's flexibility to structure, that may not be a tenet of this spring.

"We're open to anybody we think has life left in their NFL body," Tobin said. "If they're still playing at a high level, we're open to them."

One principle that seems to be staying in place is their desire not to do long-term deals with money that balloons in the later years of a deal. The fear is it would leave them with an uncompetitive team in a future year.

Tobin has said that re-structuring Burrow's contract is an option, but also indicated they'd like to get this work done with the resources at hand.

"Cap dollars have to be counted, so if we can accomplish what we want to accomplish without pushing things into future problems, we'll do that," Tobin said. "If we need that, we'll consider that as well.

"We're open to doing anything we need to do to improve our team. Where we're satisfied we're going to win a championship. That's our mindset, and that's the way we're going into the offseason. But we have resources right now, and we'll see what we can get done."