CINCINNATI — And then there was one.
The Bengals and first round pick Shemar Stewart on Friday finally reached agreement on terms of his four-year, $18.97 million contract, leaving just Trey Hendrickson the only player still working through a contract negotiation with the club.
Stewart’s contract is fully guaranteed and includes a $10.4 million signing bonus, ending a lengthy contract standoff with the team. The Bengals had insisted on including a new clause in Stewart’s contract that could void future guarantees under certain circumstances, a clause not present in previous Bengals rookie deals but very common around the NFL.
A compromise was reported reached on the so-called “default” language, with Stewart agreeing to the new language and the Bengals slightly adjusting the timing of his signing bonus payment.
This all means that the Bengals can finally get their prized first-round pick on the field this week and ramping him up on the edge, working on his pass rush technique and his highly regarded edge-setting ability. What remains to be seen is if he’ll be ready to play in games by Aug. 7, when the preseason opens in Philadelphia. The Bengals could certainly use his two-way ability and Friday’s agreement is a huge step for the Bengals defense.
Bengals owner Mike Brown said this week that the team was not about to pay for any player who would ever wind up in jail, a point he wanted agent Zac Hiller to completely understand.
“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,” Brown said. “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.”
That point came on Friday, and it appears the Bengals were willing to make some adjustments on when to pay out parts of his guaranteed money for accepting most of the language that the club wanted in the contract to bring their base first-round rookie contract language up to the standard of most of the NFL.
As for Hendrickson, Tony Pauline of Sportskeedia reported Friday that Hendrickson, under contract for 2025, is looking for guarantees in the third year of any extension while the two sides have essentially agreed on the financial parameters over the life of the two-year extension. The hangup is the Bengals have only committed to guarantees in the first year while Hendrickson wants the first two year guaranteed, with some guarantees thrown into the third year as well.
Hendrickson is due only $16 million this season, after signing an extension through the 2025 season back in 2023. Putting the contract in more focus was last week’s agreement between T.J. Watt and the Steelers, who re-signed their star edge for three years and $123 million, with $108 million guaranteed.
Hendrickson led the NFL in sacks last season with 17.5, matching his total from 2023. Hendrickson said in May that the team assured him in 2023, at the time of his one-year extension for ’25, that if he continued to perform at an elite level, the team would reward him.
“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 on 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.”
Evan McPherson had a frustrating season in 2024 after signing his three-year, $14 million extension with the team before the season last year. He went back to the drawing board and deconstructed his mechanics to determine where he could improve.
“This past off season, I kind of went back to what I grew up doing from the time I started kicking into college, pre-draft, and everything I’ve done leading up to my rookie season, I kind of resorted back to that,” McPherson said. “And I feel more comfortable in my technique now and now I can really just focus on the kick and not really focus on my steps and kind of all these other things I was putting on myself.
“It’s funny. I feel like, as a professional athlete, you’re always looking for perfection, but you got to realize that you’re never going to get it. And so I was looking for the straighter ball flight, more consistent ball flight, rather than hit like a draw. And I found it in certain technique, but I noticed that I wasn’t as consistent.”
McPherson was just 16-of-22 last season before suffering a groin injury that ended his season in early December. The six misses were a career high. That came after a 2023 season in which he made 26-of-31, including several successful attempts from over 55 yards. The misses last year were amplified because of when they took place and their significance in the season. He missed from 53 yards against Baltimore on Oct. 8 that would’ve given the Bengals an overtime win. That was primarily due to the fact the snap and the hold were botched. But the two biggest misses came back-to-back in the fourth quarter against the Chargers in LA when he had two chances to give the Bengals the lead and missed both.
“It worked like my third year. It worked really well,” McPherson said of his straighter-ball approach. “And then I continued to try to do it into (2024) and I tweaked it a little bit, and didn’t really work out. So I’m at the point now where, like I said, I’m going back to how I grew up, learning how to kick. So all I need to focus on is, kind of my target line, the wind, and my body just kind of does a rest.”
His conditioning is something else he has been working on with Darrin Simmons, who suggested he find ways to prepare his body for the rigors of an NFL season.
“Obviously, my health has been a big emphasis for me, and learning how to take care of my body,” McPherson told me. “Just making sure I’m warming up properly and long enough, kind of prolonging my my warm up routine now, making adding some stuff, making sure I’m properly warmed up before I go out and kick and I’m not just kind of running out there and on a 10-minute warm up, and some of the small muscles are cold, because I feel like that’s what I did last year, like I warmed up fine, I thought.
“But I don’t think I warmed up well enough, and just didn’t get those little muscles that I needed to, and that’s kind of what ended up tearing and then post practice, like right now, you get in the tubs and you just kind of, now I’ve implemented, like, stretching after kicking, stretching at night, all the extra body work that I feel like I haven’t done in the past, just because I had a younger body, I feel like I’m doing now, and just trying to stay ahead of the injuries.”
Bengals Camp Day 3 Takeaways:
* Red Zone day, Burrow to Ja’Marr Chase for a one-handed grab and toe-tap in the back.
* DJ Turner had a good day, breaking up passes for Tee Higgins in the back corner of the end zone.
* Dax Hill returned and was on the first team D.
* Jake Browning with a TD toss to a spirited Jermaine Burton who flipped the ball to Tycen Anderson after the defense tried to strip him of the ball.
* Not quite as hot of a day as breeze helped.
* Lucas Patrick limped off early on in 11s after apparent lower leg tweak.
* Myles Murphy and Josh Newton were back on the field after leaving practice early on Thursday.
* Evan McPherson, working on “straightening” his kicks this season, nailed the walk-off field goal from 52 yards to end practice. McPherson said after practice that he tweaked his left ankle on a bad slip in spring but is totally fine now. He’s also focused on stretching more before practice and games to improve conditioning.
* Day off Saturday before shells practice on Sunday.
