Bengals Beat: Trey Hendrickson Drama Reinforces The Business-First Approach Of Mike Brown, Katie Blackburn

CINCINNATI — The Brown-Blackburn family has never been intimidated by drama.

The list of “They Don’t Give A Care” is almost too long to mention.

And on Monday, almost a year after his threat of retirement, Trey Hendrickson continued his push publicly by reaching out to several national media outlets to

“No communication has taken place between my camp and the organization post draft. The offers prior to the draft did not reflect the vision we shared and were promised last offseason if I continued to play at a high level. Coaches are aware of these past conversations. Rather than using collaboration to get us to a point to bring me home to the team, THEY are no longer communicating. I have been eagerly awaiting a resolution of this situation, but that’s hard to do when there is no discussion and an evident lack of interest in reaching mutual goals.”

Hendrickson is fed up and held a 24-minute complaint session with local media Tuesday, a day after his statement to the national media. He wants to play in Cincinnati with teammates he believes are capable of making another run to a Super Bowl and winning this time. The Pro Bowl defensive edge is just the latest in a long line of veteran players who feel betrayed and put off by an organization that shows indifference and

“As you’re trying (to put) all these pieces together, you have certain limitations eventually,” Bengals Executive Vice President Katie Blackburn told Kelsey Conway of the Cincinnati Enquirer in April at the owners meetings in Palm Beach, Fla. “So he seemed to feel strongly about it, and thought the strength of interest out there was going to be at a certain level. And so, we said that it would be OK to at least explore, and so we don’t do that all the time, but in this case, we felt like it was the right thing to do, case-by-case basis every time. And he’s still a Bengal, so we’ll see. It’s just something that we’ll keep working through.”

The Bengals do not run their franchise like they want to win popularity contests with the fan base or their players. They run it like a business with no apparent feel for emotion. It’s their right to do it that way but they also understand – and have for decades – that they come off as cold, disinterested and unemotional.

They are – after all – lawyers at their core. That’s the way Mike and Katie were trained. It makes them expert in cold calculations but not as much in winning in the court of public opinion.

They would much rather win like they did in the late 1990s when they maneuvered the political pieces to win a highly favorable deal for Paul Brown Stadium. Many in Hamilton County were furious that Mike Brown ran an end around, brought Jeff Berding on board and worked a deal using someone who knew the inner workings of the city and county. Why be mad at Brown for doing what was in his best interest? He did what was best for his team and was more than willing to be the bad guy in the court of public opinion.

He’s always played hardball with player contracts, an art form he learned from his old man, dating back to the dawn of the franchise he brought to town in 1968.

Now, that’s been passed onto Katie. She is willing to be the villain if it means not caving on a deal to Trey Hendrickson. The All-Pro defensive edge is coming off the best two seasons in terms of sack production in team history. He is incredibly well-respected in the locker room. He is underpaid for his position and production.

He’s also 30. He’s due to make $21 million this season. Ideally, the Bengals would like to work something out because they need him. Everyone knows they need him. But he’s under contract. And the Bengals know this.

“They’ve had my back since free agency originally, coming out of New Orleans with a lot of question marks around my name,” Hendrickson told me after Tuesday offseason workout on the Kettering Health practice fields. “So, to say they don’t have my back is not true. I think they do. I think they’ve done right by their own perspective. My perspective unfortunately is a little different.”

If you believe the Hendrickson side, then it’s kind of inconceivable the Bengals haven’t even approached Hendrickson to move the ball forward and at least talk about the parameters of a contract extension.

But if you’re a student of history, the Bengals never make a move out of desperation. Say what you will about their stubborn nature or their refusal to budge in contract negotiations before the era of Joe Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins, but they are lawyers first, business people second and football executives third. They will win because their star players play to and even beyond their level. Take Joe Burrow, the $275 million quarterback who put up NFL MVP numbers and might have beaten out Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson had the Bengals won one more game and qualified for the playoffs.

Ja’Marr Chase and Trey Hendrickson had great seasons on team-friendly deals.

That’s the Bengals model. It’s been that way for decades. It’s been altered some in the Joe Burrow era, with players like Burrow having more of a say in how the roster is constructed and which star players should “not leave the building” as he put it in December. The Bengals just spent a spring of hearing how they ignored the offensive guard and safety position in free agency, how they wasted too much time getting the Chase and Higgins deals done, how they drafted a first-round edge with very limited college production in three seasons at Texas A&M, how they reached for a linebacker in the second round and now, how they’re letting the Trey Hendrickson drama build over the team for a second straight season.

Teams with Super Bowl pedigree and Vince Lombardi trophies in the case can get away with this but teams like the Bengals are vilified. Mike Brown and daughter Katie are willing to live with this because that’s the price of doing business on their own terms.