Cincy Jungle
Not good...
On Tuesday, NFL Network correspondent Cameron Wolfe joined The Insiders to break down first-round pick Shemar Stewart’s continuing holdout with the Cincinnati Bengals.
The two sides were unable to reach an agreement before the team broke for summer break, and it appears, if Wolfe is correct, we may not be close to an end.
“Yeah, the Bengals and Shemar Stewart are still at an impasse,” he said Tuesday. “Holdouts are rare but not impossible in this new CBA, and a lot of times they come down to contract language, guarantees, and precedent. I talked to a few people in this situation, and it’s simply like this: the Bengals are trying to create a new precedent with Shemar Stewart, putting language in his contract on voiding for particular off-the-field instances and whatnot that would void the guarantees in this deal.
“Shemar’s team, obviously, they don’t want to be a guinea pig for this particular motive. They’ll say last year’s first-round pick, similar pick place—he didn’t have to sign these deals. So, all of a sudden, there’s a staredown going on. The team says, ‘Hey, the 16th and 18th players in the draft, they were players who put this language in,’ and Shemar’s team will say, ‘Well, those people already had language in.’”
This isn’t anything new. We’ve known that the contract language that could potentially void future guarantees is what’s keeping the two sides from putting pen to paper. From the Bengals’ point of view, they aren’t asking for anything that the players selected before or after Stewart didn’t already accept. At the same time, Stewart wants a deal similar to what last year’s first-round pick, Amarius Mims, received.
And if that doesn’t come, Stewart is ready for his holdout to extend into training camp.
“And so, right now, there’s a lot of posturing going on,” Wolfe continued. “There’s no imminent deal, and from what I understand, Shemar is willing to linger this out through training camp if there’s no deal.”
Hopefully, the Bengals and Stewart get a deal done before preseason training camp begins, allowing the edge rusher to get up to speed on Al Golden’s new system. If they can reach an agreement with Trey Hendrickson before the team reconvenes as well, they’ll have a shot at hitting Week 1 running.
If this does last throughout training camp and the preseason before the two sides get a deal in place, it could doom the Bengals’ defense off to another slow start.
Watch the full clip below.
