Trey Hendrickson has reportedly refused to report to Bengals training camp as contract talks between the star defensive end and Cincinnati have broken down over guaranteed money. Hendrickson has now indicated that he left the state of Ohio:
The biggest weakness on the Chicago Bears roster right now is at the edge position, as my colleague Aaron Leming noted in his recent article outlining Five Questions Surrounding The Chicago Bears Heading Into Training Camp. According to PFF, the Chicago Bears have the 54th and 55th ranked defensive ends in the NFL right now in Montez Sweat and Dayo Odeyingbo. Of course, Sweat is coming off of a down year. Still, the Chicago Bears has had some of the worst edge production on defense in the league the past few seasons. According to Fox Sports, the Bears had the 27th-ranked total defense, and a big part of that was their lack of pass rush. Per ESPN, the Bears ranked 16th in total sacks in 2024, with just 40 sacks total the whole season. That’s certainly not going to cut it for any defense, let alone a disruptive attack like the one that Dennis Allen runs. Bottom line: YES, the Chicago Bears need more pass rush help.
If you look up the definition of “pass rush help” in the dictionary, you will find a picture of Trey Hendrickson. Hendrickson has recorded 77 sacks in his eight year career. Hendrickson has been incredibly durable: since 2020 he has never played in less than 15 games. His last two seasons he played in 17 games each. And speaking of the number 17, Trey Hendrickson was second in the NFL in sacks in 2023 and he lead the league in sacks last year, posting 17.5 sacks in both seasons. Trey Hendrickson is a sack machine. If sacks are what you need, sacks are what he’s got.
As Aaron notes in his article, according to Over The Cap, the Bears currently have $12 million in cap space, and that amounts to about $4 million in effective cap space for moves. However, the Bears could restructure DJ Moore’s contract, cut Chris Williams, and perhaps make another move or two to open up somewhere between $10-$15 million in available space for this season. Obviously, the Bears would need to offer Trey Hendrickson the new contract that he wants but has not been able to get out of the Bengals. What would that look like? According to reports, Hendrickson wants multiple years of guaranteed money akin to what Maxx Crosby and TJ Watt received. Those players received three years of guaranteed money. So let’s look at the Crosby and Watt contracts along with Myles Garrett, who is an older player like Hendrickson and also recently got a contract extension, again using Over The Cap’s contract numbers:
As we can see, Watt substantially jumped the Garrett and Crosby guarantees. While Garrett and...