Trey Hendrickson's Leverage PROBLEM | Bengals hold the cards in contract stand-off
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Trey Hendrickson has a leverage problem. Let's break down why. You are Locked On Bengals, your daily Cincinnati Bengals podcast. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. What up Bengals fans and welcome to another episode of the Locked On Bengals podcast. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. I'm Jake Lisco. He's James Rapine. We're your hosts of Locked On Bengals covering the Cincinnati Bengals here today.

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Well, today we're going to dive back into the Trey Hendrickson topic. And many of you are probably asking, why are you guys doing that? Well, we got a report that indicates what the Bengals offered and can use that also as an opportunity to clarify the leverage issue here that Trey Hendrickson has, which I think is interesting. And we do have a firmer understanding of today than we did before. Plus Duke Tobin scouting staff,

Got a little bit of an off-season shakeup. The Bengals lost to Scout. They hired an analytics staffer, and we will get to that a little bit later in the show. But James, let's start with the clarification. It's sort of newsy, the indication that the Bengals made a specific monetary value offer to Trey Hendrickson. Yeah, Mike Florio reporting that the Bengals have, quote, offered roughly $28 million per year.

And whatever the amount and structure, he wants more is basically what Florio reported. Obviously, that's true. I think it's interesting because the $28 million, there's been a lot of fans that certainly on social media see that and they say, well, Trey's being stubborn. If they're really offering $28 million, why wouldn't it be done? And obviously, the structure is a big part of that. The other part of it is that's still below market. And I think that's what's interesting is if they had offered him $28 million in average annual value in January,

I, this, this is probably done. I don't think Trey has any beef, any problem, but the market shifted. And when the market shifts, it shifts. And I think that's what's tough. I think that's kind of been the holdup. I, I go back to some of our shows in January, shortly after the season, when we talk about the big three, when we talk about Jamar chase T Higgins and Trey Hendrickson. And I mean the big three of this off season. Well, I think we,

We're under the impression that deals were going to get done. And then the market shifted and you saw Max Crosby get the deal that he got. You saw Miles Garrett patch things up with the Cleveland Browns. And then Daniel Hunter, who is the one guy age wise that is closest to Trey Hendrickson. Miles Garrett is just a different beast, different animal. You can't really compare him, right? He's the Jamar of past Russia. So it's just going to be a bit different. It's a,

the market shifted and Daniil Hunter cemented that into, yeah, if your tray, $28 million is still below market value and you're going to be probably in the same place next year feeling that way, then you are this year. I get that element of it. At the same time,

the leverage portion. And this is why I think Trey showed up on Tuesday when he did and kind of surprised everyone with a 24 minute press or news conference on the field and tried to say, Hey,

Pay attention to me from a contract standpoint. Let's get this done. I'm not being unreasonable. And I'm not sure Trey is being unreasonable, by the way. But the Bengals have all the leverage. They don't have to blink. They don't have to pay Trey. He isn't set to become a free agent. That's one of those things where when they have all of the cards and Trey doesn't like the card that they've offered him, well, how does he get a second card? And I think that's what he's trying to get them to do.

And will they do it? When will they do it? Do they feel compelled to do it at all? All questions that will get answered in the coming weeks and months. It's undoubtedly what he is trying to do. He's trying to find a path to exert some pressure. He's trying to find a scrap of leverage. And we'll dive into that a little bit more from a what he has to do to get his contract to count in 2025 perspective and what he wants.

really can do in terms of making things uncomfortable, because all he can really do is make things uncomfortable. And he can get his teammates to speak up for him on his behalf. He can be a distraction, which is something that he said he doesn't really want to do, right? But he can. And if things are feeling personal for him now, because he was reminded of fines and reminded of the financial reality that he faces, right?

Well, he can make it ugly. He can make it uglier than he has. And that is something that I don't think any of us want to deal with. It's exhausting watching this happen and talking about this as much as we've talked about it for the second straight offseason, not with Trey, but with contracts in general, just contracts that are lingering that other teams have.

aren't as stubborn about, where other teams will make it happen and be more proactive. And that's really the issue here, right? Because if you go back to earlier in the offseason when we were projecting contracts for these guys, $28 million is wildly reasonable before Max Crosby, Daniil Hunter, and Miles Garrett. And there are differences between Trey Hendrickson and those players. Max Crosby, the significant difference is age.

Max Crosby's deal takes him through his age 32 year. And I do have to correct when we talked about this deal last time, that 2027 salary likely guarantees early in 2026. I misread a fine detail on that contract. So,

Max Crosby did get, effectively, 26 and 27 guaranteed. Neil Hunter, which is only his age 29 and age 30 seasons, by the way, as soon as he's 31, the Raiders can't get out of that contract with no debt money and no guarantees. The Neil Hunter got a one-year extension. He got a lot of money, but it was a one-year extension with $35 million in new money.

And Miles Garrett is Miles Garrett. So there's differences between Trey and those players, right? From the Bengals' point of view, easy to see arguments as to why, well, if you want something approaching $35 million or something above $30 million, we'll give that to you for one year. And Trey doesn't want one year. He wants multiple years. He wants guarantees into the future, right? And then you can look at Max Crosby and say, well, we can't give you the Max Crosby money because you're older.

As soon as Max Crosby is the age you are now, the Raiders can cut him with no cost, no risk. And you're not Miles Garrett. We love you, Trey. We think you're great. You're not Miles Garrett. Not controversial to say that, right? So is there a middle ground that they need to find? Absolutely. But the reason that this isn't done, and we're going to get into the leverage part because that's a big part of the reason, is one, the leverage disparity here and Trey not having any. Two, the...

indirect comparisons for Trey and these three players that have signed bigger deals. And three, this massive jump

in the market where because Nick Bosa's contract existed as a previous outlier, we saw Garrett, Hunter, and Crosby all leapfrog Bosa's $34 million instead of getting to the Brian Burns, Josh Hines-Allen numbers of $28 and change, which is where the Bengals are for Trey, which is right there in that second tier. And Trey wants first-tier money because he's coming off a DPOY year, second-in-defensive player of the year voting, and all the sacks he's had in the last two seasons.

And so I understand where both sides are coming from here. But to find that middle ground, they probably need to settle in the low 30s in my head. That's what the Bengals might get to for multiple years. Might. If you can get to the three, the three, and then have some incentives baked in there that get him to 32, 33. Like there's a way to do it. Now, I will also say this. If the Bengals...

Get Trey up to $28 million this year in salary from 16 in salary, and then they're tacking on years like that's reasonable. I don't think people are there. I think people see, oh, well, $28 million. It's not. And I don't blame Trey for not wanting that and taking that.

But can they find a middle ground? Will both sides feel compelled to find that middle ground? I think that's the question. I think Trey will, would love to find the middle ground. I think everything he's doing is being completely reasonable and he's searching for answers. Part of that has to do with his agent taking that, signing that one year, agreeing to that one year contract that kind of put him in a bind. And it did now. And it was weird at the time and it's weirder now. And I get it.

$21 million in new money and you get some extra cashflow, all of those things, it made sense in that moment. But if you had the foresight to be like, oh, well, he's going to be even better in 2023 and even better in 2024, there's no way you do that deal. So I think there's a topic there. And obviously we've hinted at the leverage portion. We will get to all of that as Trey Hendrickson Watch continues coming up next.

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You mentioned the one-year extension that Trey Hendrickson agreed to in 2023. And just to put some context around that number, at the time, that $21 million one year of additional money was the third biggest extension or third biggest contract in terms of APY, it was only one year for Trey, that was signed in 2023.

besides nick bosa nick bosa the big outlier contract that year that really exploded the edge marker edge rusher market period going to 15 of the cap as average per year value at the time of signing in 2023 where the next biggest deal that offseason

Well, D.O.'s, Rashawn Gary and Montez Sweat, both right around $24 million that year. And then Trey Hendrickson at 21. Now, just two years later,

the number at the top of the market has doubled to $40 million. Not quite doubled in the case of the $24 million, but you get the idea here. Things went pretty ballistic. And a lot of that is because of this outlier deal for Nick Bosa, the $34 million that he got from San Francisco. And that shows you, as we've seen with the wide receiver market as well, how quickly markets can change in the NFL due to one outlier.

When there's a number, agents see number, agents go bigger than number. And so if one player doesn't, we've talked about this with Patrick Mahomes a lot as well, the way that that influenced the quarterback market, that leads to these market explosions when top of market players actually do need new deals. And we saw that, of course, most significantly with Myles Garrett this offseason. But the reason I bring all that up is just to point out that at the time,

21 million dollars for trey before any of the 17 sack seasons was pretty good money it was only one year that was a mistake trey and his agent if they had that foresight like you said should not have agreed to that but i just wanted to put context around that number that now sounds tiny but at the time was a very reasonable number for trey yeah and it came with five five million

in a what a signing bonus so that's why he's making 16 million this year that's why the cap hit is 18 million just to give more context they didn't agree to a 16 million dollar deal uh so there's that two they are negotiating with the bangles and getting a year added on at that point after an eight sack season that's a win i would say to a degree and and so i i do think that you can put some context around it and understand the line the logic and the mindset but it was still a mistake

It was still a mistake because he lost all of his leverage now after playing the best ball of his career over the past two years. After being, I mean, you could say 2021. I mean, he was awesome that year. But I mean, these past two years, just the numbers, 35 sacks, that dwarfs all these other guys that we're mentioning that have signed extensions and huge money that Trey's looking for. And so that's where it gets tough because he's in his prime from a production standpoint.

But age-wise, you're like, all right, well, where does the – is there a cliff? Or is it going to be gradual? And that's why I think the Bengals prioritized – and not because of Joe. I don't think the Bengals prioritized T or went that route because Joe preferred the pass catchers over. I think part of it, the big part of it, age and then obviously the leverage. Trey's under contract. T wasn't. They had to tag T. There was going to be deadlines with T. Jamar is the no-brainer, must-sign player.

One of like five guys on the planet that you sign the moment you can basically. And so Trey is not that important. He's not Jamar. And so I think that's, what's interesting now is when it comes to this, the Bengals have Trey under contract, the Bengals have Trey under contract on a heck of a deal. One of the best values in the NFL. If you're getting 17 games of, of Trey Hendrickson for $16 million in base salary and an $18 million cap hit. So,

he sort of has to play by their rules to a degree when it comes to this negotiation and he's not going to get 35 million dollars per year I I tweeted that the night Max Crosby agreed to his deal with the rate I was like I was like yeah this may affect Trey this is not going to set the the bar for Trey maybe it does in his mind initially but even I I think he knows he's not getting 35 million dollars in average annual value on any deal with the Bengals so

Can they find that common ground? I think it's kind of up to the Bengals because they hold all the cards. And then there's this whole franchise tag lingering out in the ether that the Bengals have used and aren't shy about using. They'll use it, I think, more than any other NFL team. The franchise tag for defensive end in 2026 is $26.5 million is where that's projected right now. So that's a deal.

And so, right. Like if that's a deal, if the Bengals, it's very like, it's very, yeah, take this deal or we're going to franchise you next year and you're going to be stuck again. Trey would hate that. And the drama would be endless, but the Bengals could then have Trey Hendrickson for two years and $42 million. Or, or if you add the $5 million signing bonus, it's 47, right? This, this is very T like last year where it's like,

i i remember i could say it now okay i told you i was like they may tag you again he's like man don't say that like i'm like well they if they're gonna attack you again look at the numbers obviously it worked out because he got paid at that time it did not feel like he was going so there's a lot of context there as well so yeah i think that's a really good 26 million

Oh, that's tough. That's tough, Jake. Cause, cause even if he's like, screw it, I'm going to miss half the year and then show up and get eight sacks or nine sacks. Or then they could still tag him because he's a, you know, he's a steal and tag and trade them. You never know.

Yeah. I mean, this is where the leverage thing is so hard for him. Because one, if he doesn't show up this year, his contract doesn't count. It does just roll over into next year. The Bengals are stuck with that salary cap expense on the books for 2025, but then they get credited for it in 2026. So the Bengals don't care. The Bengals are like, well, we'll get that salary cap space next year. And if Trey wants to do it again, at least we'll have the extra space so we can go do with it what we need to do with it. We'll deal with that next year. They also...

have mandatory fines for training camp. It's $50,000 per day of training camp that Trey Hendrickson misses. That adds up to a million dollars pretty quick. Doesn't take too many days for that to happen. And Florio did the math on the game checks, $888,000 per game check for Trey Hendrickson if he chooses to hold out any games in the regular season. And

Beyond all of that, for Trey Hendrickson to have any hope of being a free agent in 2026, he will need to show up somewhere around the trade deadline so that with whatever ramp up time he needs, he can be on the roster for eight games because there will be waivers for showing up late and everything. So he will need to show up at a certain time in order for enough of that contract to be active for it to count in 2025.

So when we talk about the leverage problem for Trey, there's the franchise tag and there's the fines and there's the reality that if he doesn't show up this year, he might as well retire because he's going to be stuck in this situation next year. I don't think he's retiring, just so you know. Yeah, I'm just saying like it's not a good option. No doubt. By the way, if I was him and I was going to sit out, I would just show up.

and play madden during practice you know i would just be in the building

And just do that. Like bring a game boy out to the practice. I think what's difficult is I just found my game boy advanced the other day, Trey. So if you want to borrow it for practice, I got you. Well, what's more difficult for Trey is that the Bengals aren't going to play nice with Trey, the way they play with Jamar and Jamar did the whole hold in thing last year. Yeah. Yeah. And that was to some degree, the Bengals cooperating being like, look, we understand the situation. We're not going to, we're not going to press too hard on this, but yeah,

They were, I think, a little accommodating with Jamar, despite how unfortunate those negotiations went last year. And so, no, it's completely different. And yet...

I keep coming back to, all right, well, what makes them the best? How do, how do you find a way to get that middle ground? And we'll see what the other, the next domino to fall. And hopefully the next time, hopefully we're not talking about this tomorrow would be Tuesday when Joe set the talk, Joe Burrow was set to talk last week at,

I had a couple media things. This had nothing to do with Trey. Just clearing this up real quick. Had nothing to do with Trey and Trey's comments or statement to Schefter, but they pushed it to this week. Joe's going to talk this week, barring something unforeseen. What will he say about Trey? He's going to get asked about Trey, I promise you. Multiple questions. And so that's the next step here in the Trey Hendrickson saga. Because if there is any leverage for Trey, it would be if Joe did his Super Bowl media row thing

but he did it in front of us and said, hey, Trey's a huge part of our team. He needs to be here for multiple years and get what other guys are getting at his position because he led the NFL in sacks. He can do that. Will he? I don't know. I think that's the next domino to potentially fall, though. On another note, the Bengals did add a Trey to the payroll. Let's talk about the Bengals' new...

analytics staffer the departure of a scout to finish the show coming up next you almost got me there yeah hey trey i i thought they paid trey i thought you had some breaking news for me tell them about the new tray in town that is not uh not trey hendrickson yeah we would have just had to scrap 20 minutes of lockdown bangles if that had happened so it hasn't but uh the bangles lost a scout

Since we last talked, I don't know if we maybe mentioned this in passing in a recent episode, but Christian Sarkisian leaving to Northwestern University to do some general management. He's the general manager of the athletics department. Which is a thing in college now, apparently. But going to my alma mater to do some football operation management. Are you mad they passed on you? Are you mad about that? I mean, that's your alma mater. That's a pretty...

tough football program to touch right now. That that's a, a bold step for Christian going into a tricky situation at the moment. Hey, that's, that's like his roots, man. He's like Northwestern through and through. So yeah, for sure. No doubt. I mean, it's a step up for him, right? He gets a general manager job. He gets to do it at a big 10 university. It's just, uh, in the wake of the Fitzgerald stuff there and that firing and disgrace, uh,

It's rebuilding a program is what he's tasked with. But we'll see what the Bengals do to replace him. I would imagine there is a scout hire coming. I would imagine. Now, this is the Bengals front office that we're talking about that loves their small scouting staff. So, yeah.

We'll see. I don't think that we can just assume that they're backfilling this job. But because they're so small, I think that actually makes me expect that they would backfill this job. I do not think that's what Trey Labonte's hiring indicates. Maybe it is. Maybe I end up wrong about this. And this is them filling out their scouting department with a different kind of job.

but Trey Labonte comes to the Bengals from the Buffalo Bills as a scouting research analyst. He worked in the Bills organization in an analytics world, and in his LinkedIn post, of all things, where he indicated his move to the Cincinnati Bengals, Trey Labonte thanks ownership, Duke Tobin, Sam Francis, the Bengals' only analytics guy that we know of, Samuel Francis,

for believing in his ability to add value with the intersection of scouting research and analytics i i i think it's much needed you can't have a one-person analytics department i think from a scouting standpoint well you can they proved it you can um but from a scouting standpoint it can be really valuable uh one thing that every dares have heard you say a lot is the sheet

She is analytically driven. There's a lot of analytics that go into that. And it's not the only thing, but it is a big part of it. And so to have someone that played football, played tight end, D1, has experience there, has experience as an intern for the Buffalo Bills, has experience in the college game. And then to come in to the Bengals organization and work with Sam Francis, it's a great thing.

I hope this isn't the, all right, we're going to go the analytics route and add to that part of our scouting staff and not add a Christian Sarkeesian replacement. You still need that. You still need that area scout. But this is good news for Trey LaBounty and good news for the Bengals that they added Trey LaBounty. And he's got an awesome name. And yeah, it's not paying the Trey that we talked 20 minutes about today and we're going to continue to talk about. But I do think Trey is a really nice addition to the Bengals front office.

It is cool to see the intersection of football and analytics as sharply as Trey LaBounte shows it off. Like you said, he was a tight end at Stanford. He's 6'7". Huge dude. This is a guy that you see him, you're going to think he's an athlete. But he was also... And at Miami. Don't forget Miami, Ohio now. He did a master's at Miami in sports analytics. He did a master's of...

management science and engineering with a focus in computational social science at Stanford from 2022 to 2024. So has a lot of education in that area, was a data analyst at Stanford from 23 to 24, and also a training manager where he worked with the team and then was an analytics intern with Buffalo from 24 to 25. And so now taking a step up

from the Stanford to Buffalo to Cincinnati pipeline that doesn't really exist. It's not really a pipeline. But going from data analyst to Stanford where he played football to an intern at Buffalo and getting a full-time job with the Bengals, I like seeing them expand their analytics department. I like seeing them going young here and bringing in someone who has –

worked through multiple levels with with getting some experience and has the educational background and played football good intersection of skills hopefully it adds to the room and he can find a way to present the analytic perspective that can help them improve some of their drafting practices and we'll see how that goes yeah i think it just it can't be the replacement

i need it to be the addition he's not a scout and so as long as that's the case and they're not like oh actually you know mike potts can just travel a little bit more

he can well he could just go we get videos of the pro days already like yeah we'll just get another article about how the bengals are doing everything with video now and it'll be like okay guys come on oh yeah yeah yeah so as long as that's not it like mike potts is already racking up enough sky miles right i'll speak for him like someone else can go handle some of that and christian mattered that's the other element here is he mattered he was he was

a part of things and a big part of it. Zach Taylor has mentioned him multiple times, whether it was on camera, off camera, just in chatting about the scouting staff. So to lose him, I'm going to replace him. That being said, really excited about Trailer Bounty. And if this is adding to the staff,

For all the criticism the Bengals get, this is certainly a positive one that should be highlighted that way. And hopefully that's the case because there's a lot of reasons to like them. You mentioned Stanford football. Miami Oxford football star. All right. Red Hawks.

That's how I'm going to think of him. Did he actually play there? Yeah. Oh, yeah. He has. He accumulated games at Miami. Oh, yeah. All right. There you go. How about that? I'm claiming that Stanford, Schmanford. That's a little small school. I'm talking about Miami Oxford, baby. The big dogs in the Mac. Big dogs. And we're sure they're still in the Mac. I was apparently very wrong about Marshall in an episode once. They changed conferences like 20 years ago.

And that goes to show how much I pay attention to Mac. I'm 99.9. Yeah. I was pretty sure they were still on the Mac. I was 99.9 and then you made me second guess it. I was self-effacing with not knowing about Marshall all those years ago. But I think it's nice to see them adding to the analytics department. That's what I'm encouraged by here. We are 30 seconds away from beating...

the 30 minute mark for the first time in quite some time. You think we'll do it? Yeah, we're done. That's it. I'm just saying. Oh, we did it. We under 30 minutes. We're supposed to, we got to stop talking. We did it. Say bye. Joe Burrows coming up this week. We've got another day of open OTA or off season program practices to talk about as well. We'll have you covered throughout the week here on lockdown bangles. And until next time, thanks for listening. Have a good one.

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Thank you for making Locked On your first listen every day. For your second listen, check out Locked On NFL Scouting. As training camps get closer and moves are being made, host Kyle Krabs and Joe Marino will make you the most informed NFL fan this offseason. Find Locked On NFL Scouting on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day.