Cincinnati Bengals DE Trey Hendrickson has huffed and has puffed, however he isn’t prone to blow any homes down. Final week, he took to the media to vent his frustrations with the group, escalating issues additional. Having already requested a commerce, he mentioned that he wouldn’t play this season underneath his present contract.
That’s all nicely and good, however until he’s keen to make good on his threats, nothing goes to alter. Now, maybe he may, and would, like Haason Reddick did final 12 months, however he didn’t get what he needed, both. In spite of everything, just like the Jets, the Bengals have already granted Hendrickson permission to hunt a commerce. Reddick ended up solely getting a reworked one-year contract after lacking a part of the 2024 season.
However do you suppose Mike Brown is the kind of proprietor who cares—typically, sure, but additionally particularly about this? Do you suppose Mike Brown would care if Trey Hendrickson sat out for the Bengals—within the sense of doing something about it? After all he wouldn’t, and his entire biography because the group proprietor reveals that.
It’s why veteran Bengals reporters Paul Dehner Jr. referred to as the Hendrickson scenario an avoidable, out-of-control drama. “Simply one other Tuesday in Cincinnati” is how he described the All-Professional’s impromptu on-field press convention final week. “This has too typically turn out to be the fact present round these elements”.
Whether or not it was Jessie Bates III’s contract or Jonah Williams’ commerce request, Mike Brown has allowed his group to flirt with hassle nearly any time cash is concerned. They didn’t even get Joe Burrow signed in time for coaching camp a pair years in the past. Joe Burrow. Which is why it appears like a minor miracle that they signed Tee Higgins to a long-term extension. An extension Hendrickson believes he deserves from the Bengals.
He informed reporters that he signed a one-year extension in 2023 believing that they’d do proper by him the next 12 months. Properly, Hendrickson matched his 17.5 sacks from the earlier season, and the Bengals are sitting on their palms. maybe serving as Mike Brown’s mouthpiece, you even have their govt director of participant personnel principally telling him “take it or go away it” and his head coach warning him about fines for theoretically skipping minicamp weeks from now.
And there’s not even something for Hendrickson to take as a result of the Bengals’ entrance workplace stopped speaking. Dehner argues that these kinds of avoidable dramas spill over onto the sector. He believes they’ve contributed to them developing quick, together with lacking the playoffs final 12 months. Ja’Marr Chase held in all through camp looking for a brand new contract, they usually struggled early within the season, looking of sync on offense. They stormed again late within the season, however the gap they dug proved too deep.
How the Bengals’ present drama with Trey Hendrickson will finish, I don’t know. What are they keen to take for him through commerce? In the meantime, their first-round decide, Shemar Stewart, isn’t going to observe till he has a contract signed, both.
