Bengals' Trey Hendrickson quandary: Will NFL's sack champ be traded, extended?

Trey Hendrickson might go down as the best free-agent signing in Cincinnati Bengals history.

Director of player personnel Duke Tobin took a chance on Hendrickson in March 2021, casting aside any notions he was a product of others around him with the New Orleans Saints. With only one year of significant production for the Saints, caution surrounded his profile.

The Bengals stayed confident in their evaluation, cast aside well-liked homegrown free agent Carl Lawson and inked Hendrickson to a four-year, $60 million deal.

Now, 60 1/2 sacks, 11 forced fumbles, four Pro Bowls and one All-Pro later, the Bengals again face a decision in projecting what the future looks like for the NFL’s sack champ.

Hendrickson enters the final year of his contract, a one-year extension the sides agreed to in 2023. He has notably outperformed the $21 million average value in the extension of the original contract. Hendrickson requested a trade last summer because he wasn’t satisfied with his compensation, only to quickly back down and report to the offseason program, then churn out a career year.

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🎙️ Dusting off the Duke Tobin translator

🧩One piece of advice with what will be a long #Bengals offseason

🎲 Mock offseason gambling?

🔗: https://t.co/CsRcgF0Vsu
📺: pic.twitter.com/Fty4P0s3ie

— Paul Dehner Jr. (@pauldehnerjr) January 31, 2025

He also turned 30 on Dec. 5.

Tobin acknowledged the crossroads with the Defensive Player of the Year candidate while speaking with Kelsey Conway of The Cincinnati Enquirer at the Senior Bowl.

“We’ll do what we feel is right, and we will try to get Trey re-signed,” Tobin said. “It’s not giving anybody an extension. It’s agreeing with somebody on an extension. Has he earned a pay raise and a bump in an extension? He has, and we were cognizant of that, and we will give that to him. But whether we agree on what that looks like is what is to be determined.”

Many aspects of Hendrickson’s future are to be determined. Specifically, his role with a Bengals team already fighting a numbers crunch attempting to make Ja’Marr Chase the highest-paid non-quarterback in the league while paying the highest-paid quarterback in the league (Joe Burrow) and extending arguably the top prize in free agency (Tee Higgins).

The dollars evaporate fast.

“We can’t have guys at the top of the payroll in every position, right?” Tobin continued. “We’ll do what we can.”

Thus, the questions of the moment amid one of the most fascinating offseasons for any team in the NFL: What can and what should the Bengals do with Trey Hendrickson?

Let’s explore the three options and establish an informed reality.

Extend Hendrickson

This would be the most natural reaction for an organization that witnessed the incredible production of the NFL’s sack leader. He compiled 17 1/2 sacks in each of the past two seasons. Over the past three seasons, he trails only the Cleveland Browns’ Myles Garrett for the most in the NFL while ranking sixth in total pressures.

He was the only player on the Bengals who provided any semblance of a pass rush last season, leading the club with 83 pressures, via PFF. Joseph Ossai finished second with 31. Ossai was also second with five sacks; nobody else on the team notched more than three. Ossai is a free agent.

Hendrickson is a finalist for DPOY and the first Bengals defensive All-Pro since Geno Atkins in 2015.

All those facts suggest the Bengals should pay the man.

Hendrickson counts for $18.6 million against the 2025 salary cap, the third-largest number on the team behind Burrow and Chase. They would save $16 million against the cap with a cut or trade.

The analysis here has nothing to do with Hendrickson’s being a great player and outplaying his previous contract. He has done that. Tobin acknowledged as much.

The Bengals’ decision must come down to what Hendrickson should be expected to do next. That’s nowhere near as clear.

There’s no running from the 30s cliff every NFL player falls off and almost no position Father Time more harshly judges than edge rusher, where bend, explosion, physicality and health are all paramount.

Trey Hendrickson ranks third behind Geno Atkins and Carlos Dunlap on the Bengals’ all-time sacks list. (Sam Greene / USA Today)

Look at the recent history of the best pass rushers in the NFL.

Over the last 10 years, there have been 44 individual seasons in which an edge rusher compiled at least 70 pressures, as Hendrickson did in each of the past three seasons, including the playoffs.

How many were done by a player who was older than Hendrickson will be on opening day next season? One: Khalil Mack with the Los Angeles Chargers in 2023.

That’s it.

Just filtering out PFF pass-rush grade, you can again see the long odds a player over 31 at the start of a season could produce at the level Hendrickson has established.

These are the top 10 edge rushers in pass-rush grade (minimum 600 snaps) from each of the past five seasons in order of age at the start of that year:

The average age on that long list is 27. Only five of the players were older than Hendrickson will be at the start of next season, never mind asking for that level of production beyond the current contract.

It’s fair to expect, through a historical lens, that Hendrickson can keep pace for another year (maybe two?), but after that, seasons like the one he just enjoyed are extreme outliers.

Pick your metric, the eye test over the years tells the same story as the numbers: It’s merely a matter of how long a player can hold off the drop.

Perhaps Hendrickson will be a different story. Consider the four other edge rushers since 2000 to land All-Pro nods in a season in which they turned 30: Michael Strahan (2001), James Harrison (2008), Julius Peppers (2010) and Cam Wake (2012).

Strahan posted three more first- or second-team All-Pro seasons. Peppers landed a second-team All-Pro two years later to go with three more Pro Bowl appearances. Both own gold jackets. Harrison made first-team All-Pro two years later and made three more Pro Bowls. Wake contributed three more double-digit sack campaigns.

Still, no edge rusher this century has earned first-team All-Pro after his age-32 season.

Age doesn’t have to derail success. Plenty of careers thrive years beyond the 30 barrier, but the production level we’ve witnessed from Hendrickson seldom sustains that long.

Beyond the idea of paying for a potential back end of Hendrickson’s career, how much would the Bengals need to spend to make that happen?

Hendrickson’s production as a pass rusher holds weight with the league’s best, and he has done so with consistency.

A new deal would need to climb over $25 million per year, at least, to recalibrate production to market value, and a jump into the top three — where he feels he belongs — would demand much more. Not to mention needing to lock up Hendrickson for more than merely one extra season, as they did the last time.

All of this is to say what Tobin did. An extension is deserved, but finding a point both sides agree on represents a big question.

Playing out the ’25 season on the current deal

Technically, Hendrickson is stuck. He’s under contract through the 2025 season on an extension he signed. He must complete that deal to reach the open market in free agency.

He could hold out, fake an injury or use any number of tactics, but his most direct path to cashing in would be grinding out another great season and becoming a free agent. No amount of trade requests or holdouts can change that. Hendrickson appears to have minimal interest in playing out the last year of this deal, which has $16 million in cash remaining. The situation could get ugly if that ends up being the club’s chosen route.

#Bengals All-Pro DE Trey Hendrickson is due for an extension, and the team acknowledges it. But executive Duke Tobin wasn’t overly optimistic about it getting done—and if it doesn’t, it won’t be all smooth sailing.

From today’s @NFL__Spotlight: pic.twitter.com/wNWPXwbc5H

— Ari Meirov (@MySportsUpdate) January 30, 2025

The Bengals just went through a summer and training camp of distractions with Chase’s hold-in and multiple trade requests from stars, and they suffered yet another slow start that played a major role in missing the playoffs. The idea of entering yet another contract squabble providing the potential for volatile issues with the team’s best defensive player makes for a nasty stew.

The club needs to be more cognizant of the message sent by repeatedly not paying or extending its best players and leaving them frustrated. It filtered to the field last year and could do so again if the organization is not careful.

Trade Hendrickson

This one comes straight out of the Proactive GM playbook. Take the player with one year left on his contract who has extreme value and trade him for picks that can potentially produce the next star player at a lower cost.

Still, attempting such a move almost sounds silly to say. The Bengals defense was horrific last year. Now you want to get rid of the best player and lone real pass rusher?

Well, if it’s apparent that common ground for an extension can’t be reached and a mess looms in forcing Hendrickson to play out the current deal, a trade could quickly become the best option.

There will undeniably be teams thirsting to pay a DPOY candidate and the NFL sack leader, 30 years old or not. That includes teams with money and a willingness to offer the type of extension Hendrickson’s camp seeks.

What would compensation look like for such a move? A collection of recent edge rusher trade comparisons offers a solid idea of expected return.

Judging by these trades, you can pin Hendrickson in an offseason deal to return a second-round pick, probably with another selection thrown in. Khalil Mack, Brian Burns and Von Miller ranked among the best pass rushers in the game at the time of the trade, and two had also crossed over 30 and still produced a strong return in the top half of the second round.

The Bengals might want more considering the value that remains in the last year of the contract, but it’s doubtful they could fetch a first-rounder.

The Bengals would need to be confident they could pool together competent replacements for Hendrickson. Certainly, a trade would clear the deck for 2023 first-round pick Myles Murphy to finally assume a starting role. He’s struggling to finish and collect sacks, but his pressure rate ranks in the middle of the pack among first- and second-round picks in their first two seasons in recent years. His playing time, however, lives in the bottom quarter.

Tobin and the Bengals hope substantial playing time would equal more production. Beyond that, however, this draft class is overflowing with quality defensive linemen at the interior and edges. An extra second-round pick would set them up nicely to land at least one edge with the potential to help make up for the loss. Tossing in that addition of $16 million that can be distributed elsewhere across the payroll and potentially filling the line with a collection of young, hungry players in new defensive coordinator Al Golden’s scheme could end up being an effective approach.

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Or, it could go the way too many rookie seasons and free-agent replacements for stars have gone on defense in recent years for the Bengals: ending in disappointment and leaving the pass rush a fatal flaw of the unit again.

Nobody can say for certain where this drama will end other than the road will be bumpy to the final destination. Any trade the Bengals make would be most effective before the draft, but as many of the recent deals listed above have shown, there’s a desire to do them before free agency if the team wants a new set of positional priorities and cap space.

Throw Hendrickson’s extension into the messy mix with Chase and Higgins. The Bengals have never faced this many high-priced decisions in one offseason. Though the offensive stars draw all the headlines, how the organization handles Hendrickson might be the most fascinating and impactful case of them all.

(Top photo: Dylan Buell / Getty Images)