Yahoo Sports’ Jason Fitz and Caroline Fenton discuss if Cincinnati’s reported decision to listen to trade offers for the pass rusher is a sign that the franchise needs to say goodbye to the 31-year-old.
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Video Transcript
As we learned over the weekend, the Bengals are reportedly listening to trade offers for Trey Hendrickson, so I will ask you, my friend.
Should they?
Should the Bengals trade Trey Hendrickson?
Uh, let me be clear here.
I don’t think the Bengals will trade Trey Hendrickson.
I do believe the Bengals should trade Trey Hendrickson.
And I know this is a hot take.
I’ve seen everybody across social media saying, don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it.
My thing is, look, Trey Hendrickson led the league in sacks last year.
Only one other time in history has the player, the player that led the league in sacks been traded the following year, and that was Jared Allen.
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Only one other time, right?
So I get that it’s absolutely controversial to trade the league’s leader in sacks.
But that defense sucked last year.
Like, congratulations.
You had the league leader in sacks and your defense was trash.
It was hot garbage.
Your defense was so bad that you got nowhere near the playoffs because of it, right?
Like that team, you’ve got, and this is what everybody keeps saying.
You got Joe Burrow, you’ve got a Hall of Fame caliber quarterback.
You need to fix the defense.
Correct?
They should have done that all offseason, but they didn’t.
So now we’re sitting here and it’s like, OK. What are you gonna pay Trey Hendrickson for?
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If Trey Hendrickson is on this team, they will have a bottom 5 defense in the NFL.
If Trey Hendrickson is not on this team, they will have a bottom 5 defense in the NFL.
The fact that we’re having trade conversations show that maybe the Bengals aren’t as smart as I thought they were, because this is not an August conversation.
Trey Hendrickson trade is a March conversation.
It’s.
A pre-draft conversation, because I don’t believe there is a one-for-one trade out there that exists for Trey Hendrickson right now.
There’s no team in the National Football League that would be willing to part ways with what would be a player that would be an equal value of Trey Hendrickson.
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If the Bengals didn’t want to pay him, then they should have realized that in March and.
Gotten picks that they could have used for the 2025.
Draft.
If they trade Trey Hendrickson right now, what good are 2026 picks to the 2025 Cincinnati Bengals?
So if all they’re trying to do is just to save a couple of dollars and cents here and there, they’ll get a couple of picks and they’ll rebuild for 26, 27, well then you’re just wasting precious years of Joe Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase, and T. Higgins’ prime.
So none of this stuff makes sense to me, Fitz.