Well into the 2025 offseason, the Trey Hendrickson situation remains far from resolved. A trade sending the reigning NFL sack leader away from the Bengals is not expected by those around the league, but it remains to be seen if an extension agreement will be worked out. 
Hendrickson’s efforts to land a lucrative new pact last spring were unsuccessful, and his trade request did not result in talks with interested teams taking place. This time around, the situation changed with the Bengals allowing the All-Pro to seek a trade. Cincinnati set a high asking price, and multiple offers were turned down as an illustration of the team’s desire to keep him in place for at least one more year.
Talks on a long-term pact have not gone according to plan, and both team and player have gone public with their remarks on the state of negotiations. A holdout is a possibility at this point (as is usually the case in at least a few situations around the league this time of year), and Hendrickson himself said last month talks are on hold. Finances will of course be critical in determining how this situation unfolds.
The top of the edge rush market now sits at $40MM annually. While Hendrickson would be hard-pressed to match the value of Myles Garrett‘s new deal, he could aim for one closer to the $35MM-per-season mark. The likes of Danielle Hunter, Maxx Crosby and Nick Bosa are each near that figure, and Hendrickson could look to join them. Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated writes, however, that the Bengals have yet to offer a deal with an AAV at or around $35MM.
As things stand, Hendrickson is due to collect $16MM in 2025 as a result of the short-term arrangement previously made with the team. The 30-year-old faced the opportunity of playing his way into a much more valuable pact last season, and he certainty did so by posting 17.5 sacks for the second straight season. That total helped earn him a fourth straight Pro Bowl nod and brought his Bengals total to 57 in 63 games. A notable raise is in store, but it remains to be seen how far into a new pact the team will be willing to go with respect to guaranteed compensation.
Quarterback Joe Burrow has maintained his support for a Hendrickson extension this offseason, and Breer predicts a deal will ultimately be worked out. Plenty of work remains in this case, though, and it will be interesting to see if the Bengals up their offer when negotiations pick up and if doing so helps to facilitate an agreement.
I don’t think I’d pay him that either. He’s good, But they’ve already added a ton of payroll and he’s what 32? I mean sooner or later you just have to go sorry. They should have dealt him before the draft and added a FA and got a 2nd and a 4th or whatever they could have gotten then. I mean in football you really need 55 guys at least and you get 300 million plus? They’ve paid their younger stars and sometimes you just have to say fold and walk away.
They have to work it out. They need him badly. You don’t replace an elite player who’s had 17 1/2 sacks in consecutive seasons with any FA or draft pick(s). No, they really can’t give him a long term deal, but they better find a way to pony up because they’re in deep trouble without him.
Yeah but paying him 35 million bucks a year isn’t really going to turn them into a top defense all the sudden. But spreading it around between 3 or 4 guys might make them better. And what if he gets hurt then what? If he was 25 maybe I would. But he’s gonna be 31 next year? The odds aren’t in their favor.
They should trade him to and up and coming team who can afford him who has a cheap QB like Washington.
I don’t see how it will make them better considering that’s what they’ve been doing this whole time.
Not paying him turns their defense into the worst in football though. He isn’t 32 either, he just turned 30 and coming off the best year of his career. Pencil him for 15 sacks next year and could break his leg and would try to line up on the next play, he is a dawg.
He’s not just good. He’s elite. And he’s 30, not 32.
So the alt is what? He sits out and our already bad defense gets even worse? We didnt exactly replace 17.5 sacks this offseason. Look at how much draft capital has been used trying to replace bates. Even free agent money used to replace bates. Do we want to go through the same song and dance with Trey?
$35M would make sense if he were a free agent but he’s not. He’s not a free agent because he signed an extension last off season.
Well, players are signing extensions for that amount, not FA contracts. I wonder if he’d take 3 at 90M with 60M guaranteed, and if the Bengals would offer it. That’s 2 for sure years and they can cut him after that if he declines. He’ll be 31 in December. Seems like a fair deal for both sides, but I don’t work here.
This is a constant in the NFL be design. Fans want players to “honor” their contract, even though they can be cut without any honor when the team decides it wants to move on. Teams “ask” players to restructure their contracts all the time. It seems to me that he is asking the team to restructure his contract. The team can say yes or no, but fans can’t be offended by the ask. Guaranteed contracts would solve this.
Thats just not true. Fans usually want teams to pay up. Bengals fans were clamoring for extensions for Burrow and Chase. The situation with Trey is not the same. He could have been a free agent this year but he held out two years ago and signed an extension. He can sit this season out but he will be 32 years old next offseason and he won’t recoup that money in his next contract. Thats his own/his agents fault.
What is true is that the word “contract” does not mean much in the NFL. There is nothing that says because you signed an extension last year, the team can’t ask the player to restructure or that the player can’t ask the team for the same. The market changed, and now he wants the team to respond. I guess my question would be that you would be OK with him asking for money next offseason, but not this one? So long as contracts are not fully guaranteed, there will be teams and players asking for restructures to those contracts.
A guy who makes almost a million a game (even half that after taxes and agent fees is great pay) crying about being under paid and wanting more than double the $ is sad to hear for Bengals fans.
What’s sad is your owner and GM have one of the best QBs in the NFL and will probably never win a SB because they have absolutely no idea what they are doing.
Yet they were on play a way from winning a Super Bowl a few years ago. To say they have no idea what they are doing is nonsense. Not a big fan of what they do sometimes but that’s not a fair or true statement.
They were also very close to blowing it all up again when they lucked into Joe Burrow.
The Brown family is notoriously cheap and about a decade behind the rest of the NFL. The facilities rank as the worst in the league and it will only be a matter of time before Burrow wants out.
That they luck into a decent run every few decades is not indicative of a well run franchise.
What facilities rank among the worst? The Bengals facilities are the same as every other teams.
They just finally got an indoor practice facility. Mid major colleges have had those for years. So no, their facilities aren’t the same as everybody else.
The Jaguars were a quarter away from playing in one a few years ago. What does that have to do with them being a horribly run franchise?
Why? Most folks want to be paid what they are worth. Hendrikson didn’t set the market, owners and players from other franchisees did. He’s simply looking for a deal that the market dictates he gets.
And, no, I don’t expect him to honor his current contract any more than I expect NFL owners honor them. When all the money is guaranteed, get back to me.
That won’t happen cause the browns were dumb enough to waste guarantees on Diddy Watson.
The players union that Trey belongs to hasn’t demanded guaranteed contracts so if you sign a deal you should honor it.
It’s a multibilliion dollar business. Why do people like you always make these arguments in the owners’ favor? Cap went up; price of a pass rusher went up. This is capitalism personified. If he sucked, they would have cut him, so it cuts both ways. There is no more guaranteed money. They need to renegotiate. They won’t though because they’re cheap and a feckless franchise and aalways have been.
He’s still in the 1% and complaining he isn’t even more rich is my problem. I’m not a pro holdout fan unless it’s a player on a rookie deal still and on their last season trying to avoid the tag, and even that is annoying because 1 year of tag pay is life changing money.
The Brown family are billionaires, solely based on lucking into an NFL franchise. They have no issues holding Hamilton County, Ohio and its taxpayers hostage for renovations to facilities that they exclusively make money from.
You’ll excuse me if I don’t cry tears for them when they are asked to pay players that make their wealth possible.
Why do you bring your personal grievances to sports? Furthermore, he’s hardly in the 1% as you call it. His team owner who is sabotaging your team definitely is though. So the actual one percenter who is preventing the reason you watch the team in the first place from delivering you a championship is who you see eye to eye with instead of the actual entertainment who just wants to be properly compensated as he enters the last four to five years of his career, money he’ll never be able to make again in this sport?
If I’m Hendrickson, I’d threaten to do the Ickey shuffle on the sidelines until my demands are met. I imagine Mike Brown would capitulate rather quickly 🙂
He never should have signed the extension. His agent is terrible.
Now we’ll see how many upvotes one can get for being a Mom hater…lol.
He never signed an extension. This is his FA deal from when he left New Orleans four years ago.
Not true.
No it’s not he originally signed a 4 yr contract with CIN in 2021 then as a FA.Then in 2023 he asked for a new contract and agreed to a 1 year deal which extends him through 2025 at a higher salary.Now he doesn’t like that 1 year extension and wants a new one. He should have never signed that extra year he asked for.
Still doesn’t matter. The market went up a lot since then. This is why the Bengals will never win anything. You never see the good franchises doing this. Other players are watching when you do stuff like this. It’s why Carson Palmer quit the team.
@tigers24fan. He did say they promised him a extension. I think the problem was the prices went up.
They need to trade him now while his value is high. A team like the Lions or Redskins (I hate the new name) make sense; both have cap space to accommodate an extension and draft capital and or a young defender if the Bengals would rather have that.
His value was higher last off-season. And then higher before the draft. Bengals missed their window. Very few teams can take on the 35 million he thinks he can get after already filling out their rosters. Once again they screwed themselves.
The Lions are already 37M over the 2026 cap. They cannot afford him.
No way my Lions want him.Not because of his talent it’s because they still need to sign Aiden which will cost them $40 mil a year.Plus they need too resign Gibb’s, and Laporta next season. Plus possibly signing JMo as well.Come 3 yrs from now if they resign all of them it’s going too put them massively over the cap then you add Trey at $35-40 million a season no way.
Hey Trey, maybe you should hook up with Colon Kaperstink and you can practice sacking him. Both of you need the practice in case some team calls “But, But, I’m only gonna make 16 million this year, somebody start a go fund me so I can eat and buy shoes, boo hoo,” says Hendrickson. They offered him 28 million from what I heard, if he sits he gets nada. I’m sorry, if he doesn’t come in for training camp I would rather he didn’t come in at all. He won’t be in football shape, so he’ll have to play his way into shape (3 games?). Either way he’s not 100%, which is what the Bengals would be paying for.
When I think of great pass rushers in this league his name is way down the list. Cincinnati should trade him to someone who foolishly thinks he is a difference maker.
Just because you don’t think of him doesn’t mean he isn’t up there with the best.
He has had 17.5 sacks in each of the last two seasons. That number led the entire league in 2024. His salary this year is listed at $21 million, which is 10th among pass rushers. If he had finished 10th in the league with 11 sacks he wouldn’t be saying anything.
Cincinnati’s record the last 2 years was 9-8, meaning he’s not a difference maker. You give the big dollar contracts to difference makers.
Yeah, that’s kind of how things work. Had the Bengals cut him because they thought it wasn’t good enough, I doubt you would be whining about it either. That’s exactly what happened to Harold Landry this off-season.
Maybe if he self-promoted himself like Miles Garrett and JJ Watt, you’d think of him that way. He’s had 17.5 sacks in back to back years and was one of the main reasons they made it to the Super Bowl three years ago. Or maybe you thought it was Burrow and Chase who scored only three points in the second half of that championship game who got you there, not the anchor of the defense that held that Chief offense in check and out of the endzone with less than two minutes left in regulation.
Still early in the off season so there’s plenty of time for the two sides to find common ground.
If he wasn’t kept by N.O. is his production based on Bengals usage or improved technique and physicality?
Trey has an option, if he’s dissatisfied with Bengals negotiations, play in 25-26 season and don’t sign for less than what he wants. In 26-27 season find another team that’ll put up his asking price. There’s always a team willing to over spend on aging players that post good numbers.
He will land in Atlanta. and they will finally have a defense worth bragging about. And the Falcons lived happily ever after the end.
Given how notoriously cheap the Bengals are (with the offense being the exception recently), I think the best thing Trey can do is stay in shape, sit out until the week before the opener, and then just be his usual one sack per game self. Signing with the Ravens next year is the best thing he can do to remedy this. The Browns won’t need him with Myles Garrett & Mason Graham there, and the Steelers already have Watt, Highsmith & Herbig. Getting to beat Cincinnati twice a year will be something he can’t pass up after this.