When a team has good players, those players eventually need to be paid — or replaced with younger, cheaper players.
The Bengals, who have gone plenty of years over the decades without good players, now have plenty of good players. And their best player thinks it’s time to pay up.
Quarterback Joe Burrow, appearing on ESPN’s coverage of the non-Pro Bowl Pro Bowl Games, said this when asked about receiver Ja’Marr Chase’s contract negotiations, via Albert Breer of SI.com (thanks, Bert, for watching it so we didn’t have to): “I don’t know what more he could show and do to prove himself. We have several guys like that, who have stepped up for us, and deserve to be paid — deserve to be paid what they’re worth.”
Burrow is right. But it’s hard to get the lead Bengal to change his stripes. While the Collective Bargaining Agreement has specific minimum spending requirements, Brown has resisted paying market value to top players. The Bengals had no choice but to do it with Burrow. With other key players, they’re choosing cheapness.
They’ve dragged their feet with Chase, for example, getting a triple crown for less than $5 million in 2024. And in lieu of paying receiver Tee Higgins the kind of deal he would have gotten on the open market last March, they paid him $21.8 million under the franchise tag in 2024. If their history of never keeping a player for more than one season after applying the tag holds, Higgins will hit the open market and leave in March.
Then there’s defensive end Trey Hendrickson. He wanted a new deal after a 17.5-sack season. The Bengals refused. He played for $14.8 million in 2024 (less than half of the top of the market) and became a first-team All Pro. And now they can keep him for another season, at only $15.8 million.
Despite Burrow’s words, don’t expect things to change. Based on the Bengals’ history, Higgins will be gone, Hendrickson won’t get a raise, and Chase will have to fight to get what he’s worth.
Look at what the Bengals did with safety Jessie Bates III. In lieu of paying him, they applied the tag, drafted his replacement in Dax Hill (it didn’t work), and let Bates go the next year. And they were ready to cut running back Joe Mixon because they didn’t want to pay him, until the Texans swooped in, traded for him, and gave him a new contract.
If Burrow’s going to stay with the Bengals over the long haul, he’ll have to get used to it. Unless and until he’s willing to make it clear to the team that, if they don’t change their ways, he wants a change of venue.
The problem is that Burrow has five more years under contract. And if he ever decides he’s had enough, he’ll have to make a Carson Palmer-style power play and hope the Bengals will blink. Which they weren’t going to do with Palmer until the Raiders lost Jason Campbell to a broken collarbone two days before the 2011 trade deadline and the Raiders made the Bengals an offer they couldn’t refuse.
On one hand, Burrow is getting $55 million per year. On the other hand, he might have to watch more than a few quality teammates come and go as the Bengals struggle to put enough talent around him to get the Bengals the first Super Bowl win in franchise history.
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