CINCINNATI — Mike Brown doesn’t talk often but when he does it’s still worth listening to his words carefully because they’re always a frank and honest assessment of where the franchise stands of key issues.
And when it comes to getting their top defensive player back on the field, there’s no bigger key issue than the ongoing talks with Trey Hendrickson to get him back on the field sometime in camp. The Bengals are operating in the backdrop of T.J. Watt settling with the Steelers on a three-year, $123 million extension, making him the highest paid non-quarterback in the NFL, just a tad higher than Bengals receiver Ja’Marr Chase.
“It’s a little different than it appears normally, and the answer is that when you look into it, I think, yes, I could get into the negotiation, but I’m not looking to offend Trey by saying something, and I’m not looking to try to justify where we are,” Brown said at media day Monday. “I think we’re in a good spot. I hope this thing comes together soon, and I’m just going to leave it at that. You guys can say what you want. I’m not going to say very much until it gets done, and then I’m just going to say we’re glad to have him, which we are, or will be.
Given the Super Bowl window, does Brown feel an urgency to get Hendrickson’s extension done?
“I guess we want to talk about signing Trey, and I think he’s proven to be an important player for us,” Brown told me. “He’s a valuable player.
He makes a difference. We want to get him signed. I don’t despair of it. It’s difficult. We get to this point in the year, and there’s always Chase to sign, or there’s Joe Burrow to sign, this year Hendrickson to sign. There seems to be somebody, and that’s alright, that’s how the system works. We try to get it done, and we’re still in there trying. I’m not the one doing it, but our guys are working on it as we sit right here. We’ll see where it ends up.”
Hendrickson is signed for this season at $16 million with bonuses that add $5 million to that figure. But the NFL sack lead of the last two seasons has held out of spring workouts and missed mandatory minicamp, insisting on a new contract extension that is comparable to the likes of Danielle Hunter and Maxx Crosby.
Then there’s rookie Shemar Stewart, the first-round pick that remains the only first-round pick in the NFL unsigned. Brown shed some light on what he and the team see as the primary sticking point with agent Zac Hiller.
“It’s a very peculiar thing, it isn’t about money,” Brown said. “That’s been agreed to for months. It’s about the guarantee in the case of if you were to do something contrary to the discipline levels of the league. I don’t think that’s going to happen ever, but that’s what’s holding it up. It’s never happened as long as I can remember.
“His agent wants it to be so that if he acted in a terrible fashion – this is all hypothetical – something that rises to the level of going to prison that we would be on the line for the guarantee for the future years that hadn’t been paid. Our position is if that happens we’re not going to be. We’re not going to be paying someone who is sitting in jail. That’s not what we’re going to do. It is a negotiation that has reached the level of, I can only think of a word I shouldn’t use here, but it’s silliness. We’ll have to wait until we get a better result. I think eventually that’s going to happen. I don’t think it’s going to happen today or tomorrow, but at some point it will.”
There were plenty of other issues addressed Monday on the annual media luncheon day, otherwise known as Mock Turtle Soup Day at Paycor Stadium, with training camp set to begin Wednesday.
Mike Brown on terms being agreed to with Hamilton County, extending lease through 2036:
“Well, it isn’t done. What’s done is a general understanding. I think that’s a big thing. The county has said that what we’re asking for is in the generality of what other NFL teams deals are in markets our size, and in situations approaching ours. In other words the money part of it is pretty well settled in a way that is not dissimilar from what Baltimore does, what Cleveland does, what Nashville did, Pittsburgh – teams that are similar to us. In all honesty some of them have a little better deals probably than what we have. Our goal is to make this thing work in Cincinnati. We think the stadium fits our needs, fits the community for size. It’s a nice stadium, it really is. It needs to be maintained. We want that to be the case moving forward, but what we’re doing is asking go forward in a way not too dissimilar from how we have been going all these years. We have 10 days to figure out all the details and I think that’s going to happen.”
Brown on Bengals being one of only NFL teams voting against private equity:
“I don’t look upon this as an effort to generate the most return of capital we can do. I am happy with how it works financially. If anything, I am not the normal business man. I am not looking to maximize profit. I am looking to have a team that pleases the people in Cincinnati and pleases me, too. It isn’t a bottom line thing. I have no interest in this $4 billion stuff. Suddenly people said you are worth $4 billion. No I’m not. It’s ridiculous. I’m happy. My goal is to have my kids have the same opportunity I had and that has pretty well been accomplished. That is hard to do in this world with the tax laws that are existing today. But no one cares about that. I care about it. I’ve tried to do it. But I haven’t tried to maximize profit. If I did, I think we wouldn’t be talking about the Cincinnati Bengals. We would be talking where the maximum profit probably exists.”
Bengals Director of Player Personnel Duke Tobin on Trey Hendrickson:
“Trey is an important part of our team, and he’s under contract. We expect all of our guys under contract to be here. He’s a guy who has been very valuable. Like I said before, he’s earned a raise and an extension, and we’ll continue to see if we can come together on something. Having good players is a good problem to have, and we’ve got a lot of good players, and we’ve got a lot of highly-paid players, and fitting it together is what we’re working for.
“There’s always urgency. We’d like to get something done. I wouldn’t have said we wanted to give him a raise and an extension if I wasn’t serious about it. So whether it happens early or late, I don’t know, but right now he’s a part of our football team. I think that gets lost in the shuffle a little bit.”
Tobin on Shemar Stewart:
“I think Shemar needs to be here. The No. 1 thing a young player can do is have a fast start and have a good rookie season. That normally translates into a long productive NFL career and he needs to be here getting to work on it, He can be a really a good piece of our football team, which is a championship caliber football team. And he can provide a lot of good reps for us, but he’s got to be here to do it. I hope
he gets here. I’m not going to blame Shemar. He’s listening to the advice that he’s paying for. I don’t understand or believe or agree with the advice. But I’m not the one paying for it. If I thought we were treating him unfairly as it relates to all the other draft picks in this year’s draft, then maybe it’d be a different story. But we’re not. Again, I don’t fully understand where things are there.”
