CINCINNATI -- Leon Hall had trouble articulating the exact reason why, but to him, this offseason feels slightly different than his other seven.

"It's a big offseason, not only for me, but for the team," the Cincinnati Bengals cornerback said earlier this week. "Year after year it's a big offseason but for whatever reason, this year seems a little bit bigger."

Maybe it's because the Bengals have 27 players who are in the final year of their contracts. Maybe it's because Andy Dalton's contract starts to slip into a more manageable pay-to-play format after 2015, making it easier for the Bengals to release him before the scheduled 2020 termination if his performance disappoints. Maybe it's because players like Hall, the old Bengals guard that turned the franchise from a perennial loser into an annual competitor, have gotten older and soon could be entering retirement or new late-career deals with different teams.

Or maybe it's because like everyone else, the Bengals are starting to sense that their window for a conference championship and Super Bowl berth is beginning to close.

Perhaps, it's a combination of all of the above.

"It's hard to explain," Hall said.

Hall doesn't quite view this as a make-or-break year for the Bengals, but he is optimistic about this team's desire to break Cincinnati's one-and-done playoff curse.

"It could be there's a lot of guys on our team in their last year and everybody knows that not everybody is going to come back and we feel like we do have a championship team," Hall said. "So you put those both together and you almost feel like this year isn't make or break, but it is one of the bigger offseason and upcoming seasons we've had for a while."

What makes it such a big offseason for Hall personally is the fact that he has had the rare pleasure of spending the past four months training his entire body, and not just rehabbing one particular body part. Ever since tearing an Achilles in 2011, Hall has spent some portion of his recent offseasons trying to get a specific are of his body healthy for the subsequent season. After working back from a thumb injury in 2013, he spent all of last spring and summer trying to return from a second Achilles tear.

Without such rehab this spring, he has had more time to relax, reflect, and condition the rest of his body.

"You are able to focus on pretty much everything, whereas seasons before, you are doing drills but you are thinking about your leg," Hall said. "It's not that you're nervous it's not going to do well, but you are mindful of if it's strong enough or what you need to do to get it stronger or have more flexibility or more power. It's definitely a different mindset."

Although he had the second-highest tackle total of his career (67) and recorded an interception, Hall felt he failed in 2014 to meet his personal expectations. He dropped other interception opportunities and was beat by quicker, younger receivers fairly regularly. Physically, he felt fine, but something was off. His focus these next few months is to figure it out.

"Looking back on it, I had some mental lapses in there which to me are something that's unforgivable," Hall said. "That's the thing about this offseason. I'm able to look back more than I have in past years."

Maybe similar reflections -- on what and who they could have been --are what has this year feeling so different to the rest of the Bengals.