Trey Hendrickson has been a vital piece of the Cincinnati Bengals’ defense since joining the franchise as a free agent ahead of the 2021 season. He has appeared in 65 games, recording 155 total tackles, 104 solo tackles, 53 tackles for loss, 57.0 sacks, 112 quarterback hits, 11 forced fumbles, and 12 passes defended.
Only Cleveland Browns pass rusher Myles Garrett and Pittsburgh Steelers pass rusher T.J. Watt have recorded more sacks during that span. Meanwhile, he has earned Pro Bowl honors in each of his four seasons in Cincinnati, establishing himself as one of the league’s premier pass rushers.
Hendrickson earned first-team All-Pro honors and finished as the Defensive Player of the Year runner-up in 2024 after leading the league with 17.5 sacks, marking his second consecutive year recording that amount. Despite his immense production and only having one year remaining on his contract, he has not received a new deal, leading him to hold out. J.J. Watt recently used his situation as an example while sending a warning to NFL franchises.
J.J. Watt Uses Trey Hendrickson As An Example of Why Teams Shouldn’t Wait to Extend Top Players
Watt was widely considered one of the greatest pass rushers of his era, winning three Defensive Player of the Year awards while earning All-Pro honors seven times. He recently weighed in on Hendrickson’s holdout from the Cincinnati Bengals during an appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show”, stating:
“You kick the can down the road, the can gets a whole lot bigger. And then the player says, ‘well, the can’s a lot bigger now, fill it up’. And you don’t want to fill it up because you say, ‘well, we have to pay all these other guys, we have to take care of these other things’. It’s like, ‘well, I wanted to fill the can way back down here when it was a little soup can, now we got ourselves a garbage pail’… We’ve seen Trey say it publicly.
“The team says that they’re going to talk to you early in the year. ‘We’re going to get this thing done, just let us get through this season and then we’ll make sure we take care of it early’. And then you come early in the offseason and you say, ‘hey, let’s take care of this, we said we were going to do this early’.
“All of a sudden, it’s crickets. All of a sudden, it’s silence. Or, it’s, ‘hey, we have to get through the combine. Hey, we have to get through free agency’. It’s like, ‘woah, woah, woah, we talked about last year, you said if we kick the can down the road, we were going to take care of it, we’re not taking care of it’.”
“If you keep kicking the can down the road the can gets a whole lot bigger..
Look at the Trey Hendrickson situation” ~ @JJWatt #PMSLive https://t.co/kkuFkSUKKS pic.twitter.com/l9PYXs1KLq
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) May 28, 2025
Reports recently emerged that the Bengals offered Hendrickson a contract that would pay him $28 million annually, however, he turned it down, hoping for a larger payday. It is unclear what figure would ensure his return to the field. The third-round pick in the 2017 NFL Draft is owed a base salary of $15.8 million in 2025.