After placing another franchise tag on Tee Higgins, the Cincinnati Bengals are trying the balancing act by reducing their active cap spending. With a total of $237,347,156, Cincinnati has the 14th highest active cap cost in the NFL. With Joe Burrow reportedly open to reworking his deal, everything from restructuring contracts to cutting veteran players is on the table for the Bengals.
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The team has been reluctant to extend the contract of players including Trey Hendrickson, who led the league in sacks in back-to-back seasons. The defensive end won the sacks title with a 17.5 total in both the 2023-34 and 2024-25 seasons.
This reluctance confounds Shannon Sharpe and Chad Johnson, who spoke at large about the Bengals’ business dealings involving Hendrickson. Citing the team’s lack of willingness to offer contract extensions as a major contributor to their current financial situation, Sharpe had little sympathy for the front office.
“That’s the problem you run into, Ocho, when you keep pushing the can down the road. Okay, you kicked Ja’Marr Chase’s can down the road, he gets the triple crown,” Shannon said on Nightcap.
“Okay, you wouldn’t do anything with Hendrickson. Now he led the league in sacks back-to-back seasons… You franchise tag Tee Higgins, now he follows that up and he’s like “Y’all got to pay me. I need like $75 million fully guaranteed money the first year,” added the Hall of Famer.
Asserting that “you’re not going to be able to keep them all,” Sharpe described the Bengals’ current strategy as “impractical”.
Hendrickson is currently set to earn a base salary of $15.8 million in 2025 and will deliver a cap space hit of $18,666,668. Considering that there are no guarantees for him in the final year of his deal, fans can expect the NFL’s sack leader to demand a pay increase.
Hendrickson’s $21 million-per-year average sees him rank just outside of the top 10 in pay for edge rushers. With Myles Garrett currently netting a rate of $25 million per year, and T.J. Watt claiming just over $28 million per year, the Bengals will surely be looking to target a number in this range.
That would allow Hendrickson to become a top-10 edge rusher in terms of pay while also keeping his total impact on their cap space to a minimum. However, managing cap space while keeping the players happy and upholding the interest of the team and the business is a tough balancing act. Johnson tried to present this, hoping to paint a realistic picture for the fanbase.
“They don’t understand the difference in how the players feel, from the business side of things, as opposed to how the fans feel,” said the former Bengal.
“The fans think ‘Oh, it’s so easy. The cap is going up, they are going to sign everybody’. Listen, if you look at the reactions from Tee, you look at the reactions from Ja’Marr Chase, it tells you that things aren’t as sweet as you think,” Ocho added.
Noting that the Bengals still have to “think about the foreseeable future”, Johnson’s comments seem to suggest that someone will ultimately be the odd man out when it comes to Cincinnati handing pay increases.
Given that Johnson maintained his position of Higgins being the most “deserving” of a new contract, that someone very well could be Hendrickson.
