10:38pm: The latest round of negotiations between Hendrickson and the Bengals has proven to be “very contentious,” NFL insider Jordan Schultz reports. He adds Monday’s talks did not yield progress, and it remains to be seen at this point when communication between the parties will open again. A lengthy holdout could very well be in store. He has since landed on the Bengals’ reserve/did not report list.
9:49am: Trey Hendrickson has long loomed as a candidate to skip the start of training camp. With the Bengals preparing to begin padded practices, the reigning sack leader is indeed absent. 
Hendrickson informed ESPN’s Adam Schefter on Tuesday that he has elected to hold out from training camp. As a result, he will begin accruing mandatory daily fines while extension talks continue. Owner Mike Brown struck an optimistic tone yesterday when speaking to the media about the Hendrickson situation. For at least the time being, however, this stalemate will continue.
A native of Orlando, Hendrickson posted on Instagram that he has returned to Florida in the absence of an agreement. The 30-year-old has maintained since the spring that he is prepared to not only hold out of training camp but into the regular season if no extension is worked out. Several weeks remain to see if that will end up taking place, but today’s expected update is another indication this situation is not in a good place. To date, the Bengals have yet to offer a deal in the $35MM-per-year range and the team’s preference is to add one year to Hendrickson’s current pact.
Of course, guarantees are a key sticking point in negotiations. Ian Rapoport of NFL Network reports Cincinnati is willing to authorize a multi-year pact which includes a “substantial raise” compared to the $16MM Hendrickson is currently owed for 2025 (video link). The issue, to no surprise, is the four-time Pro Bowler’s desire to secure guarantees for 2026 “and beyond” and thus match what a number of other edge rushers have received on that front this offseason with their new deals. T.J. Watt is the most recent pass rusher to reset the market, and his new Steelers pact includes $108MM fully guaranteed along with a record-breaking cashflow for non-quarterbacks.
It would come as a major surprise if Hendrickson were to match Watt in terms of base or locked in earnings on his next pact. Nevertheless, an increase in guarantees will likely be needed to get a deal done. During today’s episode of Good Morning Football, Manti Te’o said he has spoken with Hendrickson, who described the Bengals’ offers regarding guaranteed money as “atrociously, atrociously low” (h/t Rapoport’s colleague Tom Pelissero).
The Bengals are certainly no stranger to contract drama leading up to the regular season. Tension with the likes of Joe Mixon, Jessie Bates, Joe Burrow, Tee Higgins and Ja’Marr Chase over the past several years have created uncertainty about those players’ availability in time for Week 1. That will also be the case for Hendrickson unless a breakthrough can be made.
Team guys are the best!!
In four seasons, he’s given the Bengals 65 games, 57 sacks (more than anyone but Garrett of Watt), and four Pro Bowl appearances, and made a total of under $65 million. The guy has given the team a huge amount of surplus value. Maybe the team should occasionally take care of its best players without being forced into it.
TJ Watt said it best. How can you fight on the field for an owner that could care less?
That team won’t make the playoffs without him. They’ll be giving up 40 PPG.
The common denominator here is the organization not the player. But sure carry some more water for awful team management. Nothing like alienating the employees for a dollar.
Ain’t my team so I could care less. It seems as though the AFC North is like the Kardashians. Drama.
Ridiculous take.
Morals clause covers what the owner talked about
I agree with Henderson that guarantees are important and I understand his reasons for wanting them, but it seems like both sides are making this much more contentious than it has to be. Of course, I don’t get why anyone involved in negotiations feels the need to give sound bites to reporters, either.
On one hand, Hendrickson is still on a contract, so there is some element of “honoring your deal” that plays in here. Hendrickson is smart, though. He’s made enough that he doesn’t necessarily need the money. More importantly, the Stewart standoff and the fact that Hubbard is gone puts Cincinnati in a bad spot on the edge. He’s got more leverage now than he would have otherwise, and his play has been up there with the highest paid players at his position. If we buy into the “deserves to be paid” idea, he’s certainly done so.
I’m not sure why Cincy would willingly play with fire and stiff arm him into not getting more guaranteed money on, say, a three year deal. They’re not exactly in a good spot right now edge-wise, and he’s been all they wanted and then some as a player.
Posturing with sound bites has become an art form that probably doesn’t get the respect due it. Both sides in a negotiation want to have public sentiment in their favor.
Pay Trey! Okay
Pay Joe! Okay.
Pay Ja’Maar! Okay.
Pay Tee! Okay
Pay Trey more!
Nothing easier than spending someone else’s money.
They kicked the can down the road with Hendrickson. They’re down the road now. They could have traded him if they didn’t want to pay him remotely close to a competitive market rate.
If you find it financially burdensome to pay a top five quarterback and one of the elite wide receiver tandems in football, maybe you shouldn’t own an NFL team.
Trey signed the contract.
Did you miss the part where Joe, Ja’Marr, and Tee got paid?
What do they want, a cookie for dragging their feet and finally doing what they should obviously do?
Do you want a pat on the back for negotiating contracts for a team you don’t own?
What about you trying to save money for a billionaire?
When players start giving money back for playing like garbage, then they can start asking for more when they play well.
That’s exactly what Hendrickson is doing- Asking for more because he’s played well.
Will he give it back if he doesn’t play well?
Do you not understand how NFL contracts work or something?
Players only definitely get their GUARANTEED money. The rest they lose if a team decides to cut them.
Beach.. Do the owners give back ticket sales or TV money when their team loses?? Get real.
You know. Wild idea
I wonder if teams should start offering a minimum salary per year and players are paid monthly based on production that month.
I’m interesting in seeing how that would play out honestly.
Ridiculous idea that would hurt the players.
Wouldn’t hurt the players at all. In fact it’d probably make the players more money.
And teams already do this lmao. What do you think guaranteed money and incentives in contracts are
Guaranteed money is minimum salary and instead of monthly payments teams dish out incentives at end of year if guys hit certain milestones
But instead of milestones being reached I wonder how much money players would make if they were paid out monthly per touchdown per interception per sack.
Except it would because players get hurt. A lot.
Your point is moot cause if they get hurt they don’t reach incentives anyways in their current contracts
What’s the difference between not reaching incentives each month and not reaching incentives by end of the year due to injury?
Players aren’t even allowed to get raises their first three years. Owners come out ahead.
The salary cap doesn’t go into the owners’ pockets, guys. This doesn’t save Mike Brown any money personally. The unused cap gets rolled over into the next year. If there were money that needed to go into escrow as part of the old league rule that still exists for some reason, then it might affect their finances. Unless we’re talking about a “cash over cap” signing bonus, the owner’s personal finances don’t play much into contract negotiations.
But this isn’t saving Brown any money personally, it’s saving the cap space. If Brown (or Katie Blackburn, who I believe is actually the one who is supposed to handle negotiationsc, but I could be mistaken) is saying no, then it is because they don’t want to invest the space. The whole “billionaires vs. millionaires” angle is, frankly, pretty dumb to begin with. It’s not like these guys are hurting for money, so attempting to use one’s financial status as an argument really has nothing to do with the situation at hand, especially when the issue is cap space. Brown isn’t going to write Hendrickson a personal cheque from his personal bank account; this has to be measured against the cap.
In this case, as I stated below, Brown should write the cheque (or, rather, authorize it to be written). Hendrickson and the Bengals agreed to put this off when he wanted his first readjustment not too long ago, so this should have been expected from Cincy’s end. If they haven’t offered guaranteed money to him beyond the first year, it’s worth the effort to do so. They can’t miss both he and Stewart just for the sake of one extra year of guarantees on Hendrickson’s deal. He has been very important to them, and it sets good precedent to resolve these disputes for other players. No, players aren’t entitled to money, and types, teams abuse this system as much as players, but in this case, it’s in Cincy’s best interest to just bite the bullet and offer more guarantees-or trade Hendrickson to a place that will.
All fully guaranteed money still has to go into escrow at the start of a contract, which is definitely a sticking point for the comparatively cash poor owner who constantly bucks at giving out competitive guarantee amounts and structures. And they’ve definitely poisoned the well for negotiations. Heck, Higgins had to leave a very good agent to sign with Chase’s agent just as a tactic to force their hand.
Yeah, it’s an outdated rule that dates back to when the league was much more financially insolvent. It’s actually not mandatory anymore, though-at least according to the last CBA. It’s hard to tell because they won’t speak on it, but the Browns apparently didn’t do with Watson when they signed his deal. It’s odd. We do still need to remember that owners’ personal finances are not 1:1 with team cap space.
Like I said-I’m for Hendrickson getting more guarantees. I don’t think he actually will ask for a Watt level deal, but after the bad blood between him and Blackburn (plus Taylor), the number did probably get higher. I do think he’s being a bit dramatic, but the Bengals appear unnecessarily stubborn. If Brown doesn’t have the money (which would be odd, methinks), I can’t blame him for not offering it-if he does, then I don’t know why he’s hesitating (maybe he thinks he doesn’t have enough for both Stewart and Hendrickson and other signings?).
But the thing that I know for sure is that they’ve really strained any possibility of Hendrickson meeting them at a lower number. If they can’t make a deal happen, they need to trade him to a place where he can get the deal that he wants. It’ll close the problem for them, probably make Hendrickson happier, and net them at least some compensation. Hardball isn’t the appropriate response here for Cincy, especially for a guy who has played so well.
I mean, even if Brown doesn’t have the money, he still has the money. There are ways to do it without selling off a slice of the team for cash, which is what Davis did recently and the Maras did years ago. Brown doesn’t want to do that because then someone else would have thoughts on how he runs the team. It’s not like he only balks at guarantees. They didn’t build a full indoor practice facility until Burrow. They have the smallest scouting staff in football by a wide margin. You should hear Andrew Whitworth talking about the facility differences when he went to the Rams. It’s a waste, but the Browns make a lot of money.
I think you mean the Bengals?
Yeah, I’m not defending Mike Brown. That’s why I said that I’d find it odd. I was, as I often am disposed to doing, laying out the scenarios briefly and considering them on their own. As I noted, I think that Cincy should just give Hendrickson a couple of years of guarantees at a reasonable rate so he feels secure and end this standoff. Like I’ve also said, they should have expected this to come up this year given how they sort of put it off a few years ago with the compromise extension that they signed (and that Hendrickson is currently playing on-in theory, at least).
I don’t know Mike Brown or Katie Blackburn (obviously), but they seem to get anxious at the thought of spending money. That’s not necessarily a bad thing on its own in life, but you don’t spend on the things that you do need, you won’t get the results that you want to get. If they don’t want to do that for Hendrickson, they should let him seek a trade.
I meant the Browns who own the Bengals. I realize this was probably the least clear way I could have phrased that.
And yeah, that makes sense. I keep coming back to that last point, which is that if they weren’t going to give him a bigger deal–after supposedly assuring them they would a year ago if he had another big season–then they should have dealt with all of this much earlier in the offseason.
I see. Also, agreed.
Also, for the record: I read today that the Packers reported $432.6 million received in shared NFL revenue, which of course was a new record (who knows if that stands when inflation is considered; I.e., proportionate dollars). That’s more than enough to cover the cap.
It also puts the NFL’s reported earnings at $13.8 billion, at least as extrapolated from those dollars which go towards the shared revenue formula. Also interestingly, it’s slightly less than (in the grand scheme of things) than the $14 billion that I read that the Cowboys were valued at in Forbes…and that was several years back. Funny to consider that the top teams by value are probably worth as much as the NFL makes in an entire year.
Enlightening, and there are plenty of things that doesn’t cover. Not to mention an 18th game is probably inevitable, and new TV contracts in 2029 are going to be absurd.
Teams literally cut them when they play like garbage.
As a Bills fan – you love to see it.
The Bengals have one of the smaller ownership revenue bases in the NFL. The Brown family isn’t by any means poor, but they don’t have unlimited funds either. In that sense they’re similar to the Rooneys in Pittsburgh. Even with a salary cap, when you’re looking at longer term deals you have to budget wisely.
So if you’re in that situation, and you know that you have to spend maybe a little more wisely than the next team, the LAST thing you should be doing are any of the following: waiti mg until the metaphorical last minute to start extension negotiations with your best players; conducting some of those negotiations in the media; drawing lines in the sand, but especially not drawing lines in the sand for some players, but then making exceptions for others. The Bengals routinely do all of these.
As a comparative example: Say what you will about the TJ Watt contract, but how many sound bites did you get from either side during talks? (Next to none, it was mostly speculation after speculation).
The Steelers are far from perfect, but they are usually consistent with policies and open in their communication with players. The Bengals rarely are either, and that might be why they’re having issues now.
That’s the problem with being both cheap and stubborn.
They’d have saved at least a hundred million dollars extending Tee and Jamar earlier, if not more.
They’d have been able to get Trey for like $25 million a year back then, and all these guys would have gladly signed due to the way the team showed urgency and the level of generosity of the contract at the time.
Instead they disrespected all three but especially Tee and Trey.
Their plan to replace those two through the draft was solid but as usual their execution was terrible because they don’t seem to understand that Tee for example was a #1 coming out of college who they only got in the second round because he was slightly slower than the other WRs at 4.51 and because I believe he had been injured a bit in college maybe.
But there was no question about how good he was yet they thought they could replace him with guys like Charlie Jones, Jermaine Burton, and Iosivas. That’s delusional.
Drafting Myles Murphy also made sense on paper but they don’t seem to grasp that Trey is the type of player who only got drafted as low as he did because he went to a small school or the fact that the chances of a guy like him going from being a third round pick who had a breakout last year in New Orleans to playing on the level of future first ballot Hall of Famers almost every year in Cincinnati and especially these past two years is pretty much unheard of.
All of the best DEs are relentless, high motor guys. Murphy might be big but he’s never shown that same high motor, even back in college. Cincinnati doesn’t seem to understand this though.
No arguments here. It would be different if Hendrickson hadn’t worked out. I can even understand the hesitancy back then, not knowing if Hendrickson would be consistent (spoiler alert: he was) and not knowing how the payment futures were going to be for the offense. I can even give them the benefit of the doubt for all of that. The thing that I don’t get, in that case, would be why Cincy would not realize that their temporary pact in 2022 only pushed this issue down the road further? They should have expected this to come up again.
I have sympathy for reserving cap space, but this probably wouldn’t have been a market setting deal before the Bengals and Hendrickson started having this back and forth. Even if Hendrickson is “emotional” as Brown said (why say that to the press during a contract negotiation? He followed it with some optimism, but don’t add fuel to your daughter’s and your coach’s comments from before), Cincy is definitely dragging this out when it should have been something that expected and planned for.
The Bengals could have gotten it much more easily (definitely), at a lower price (probably), and with fewer distraction (definitely). Now they have to deal with this and Stewart with the season rapidly approaching. Seems like poor decision making on their end.
CIN contract language recently changed.
100% reported.
My deal is
Dozens of articles that the new language is just updated to what every other teams is doing anyway. CiN is just finally adapting.
But then the majority of articles, paints the updated contract language as unexpected, rare, vague, cheap.
What is the reality. I hate repeated agent talk, almost as much as I hate front office spin.
What’s his trade value, a first?
I’ve started a go fund me for Trey. ” Millionaire who has been treated badly by his employer. He’s only being offered 28 million by his employer when he wants 40 million. He believes he can’t survive without the extra 12 million to pay his bills He says he will not compromise his principles to play under the contract he has already signed, so he’s determined to hold out. Please send everything you can spare to help Trey keep his million dollar home, 6 cars and vacation home.” It’s the page between the kid who has cancer and the family who lost their father in a car accident and is being evicted. You hold on Trey, help is coming.
Day 23, 02, 13, 07, 32, and 47, the Bengals feel very positive a deal will get done soon.
On twelve days, the negotiation is only hopeful.
Some days it is contentious.
Some days it is very contentious and no deal in sight.
I think that i can speak for most nfl fans. We need more frequent updates on this thing from NFL reporters.
It sounds so engaging, with all of the specific details. Can’t wait for the book.
Bum. Play. Your. Deal.
Take care of the guy you said you would take care of a year ago who then led the league in sacks.
They took care of him by signing a deal that includes this season. Which he should honor.
The teams version of taking care of him in a new deal doesn’t align with the players version so we should default to what was already agreed on which is the current deal.
He should play it out.
They kicked the can down the road by a year. If they told him they would work on a competitive deal with him in a year if he put up another big season, then they should have either done that or traded him to someone who would before they got to this point.
They don’t owe that to him either way. They owe him what both parties agreed on. Nothing else is guaranteed. If Trey was banking on a team to do something not guaranteed, thats on him.
You can decide that good faith and industry norms don’t matter, but that’s how you get a team that’s regularly alienating top players and sabotaging itself.
I don’t disagree with that, never will.
I always take the same tone with contract issues.
The nflpa sucks, get guaranteed deals and eliminate the tags.
The player and team agree to deals mutually and include what happens when a player is cut, injured, traded etc. and both sides especially the player should hold to that.
Some players under play their expected earnings, some over play. That is the nature of it.