Bengals' Trey Hendrickson gets 'unpredictable' contract update before training camp

There's still a lot of uncertainty surrounding the Cincinnati Bengals and Trey Hendrickson.

The star defensive end has made it clear he won't play the 2025 season on his current deal, which would pay him $16 million.

But what's the resolution? No one seems to know.

SI's NFL insider Albert Breer used the word "unpredictable" to describe it all in a new breakdown he released Monday.

Here's more from Breer:

The Trey Hendrickson situation remains, I’d say, unpredictable. This is the third consecutive offseason that Cincinnati’s been here with a player who’s posted 35 sacks over the past two years. He will turn 31 in December. He got a one-year Band-Aid of an extension in 2023 to make up for the COVID-19 discount the Bengals got on him in ’21, and no adjustment last year. So it seems pretty unlikely he’s going to be cutting the team any breaks.

Further complicating things is that Chase got a deal that broke previous Bengals precedents on guarantees, but Higgins’s contract really didn’t, and that Myles Garrett pushed the top of the market at Hendrickson’s position to $40 million per year, while Danielle Hunter and Maxx Crosby got the market for third-contract types into the mid-30s this offseason. So there’s a lot of ground to cover there, even if there wasn’t the history that’s present with this one.

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The Bengals obviously are a better team with Hendrickson on the field. He's the leader of a defense that is very much second-fiddle to the current offense in Cincinnati.

Their hopes of a Super Bowl rest in large part on the defensive group improving enough to keep up with the offensive talent.

To do that, Hendrickson needs to be on the field. And to do that, he needs a new contract.

So stay tuned to this saga's twists and turns. How it ends could matter greatly to the 2025 NFL season.

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