The Cincinnati Bengals are extremely unlikely to trade All-Pro defensive end Trey Hendrickson, as always.
But the conversation won’t stop coming up until the NFL’s trade deadline passes this year. That would’ve happened normally, yet things have kicked up a notch further in the wake of Joe Burrow’s injury and surgery.
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The latest Hendrickson trade speculation comes from Bleacher Report’s Kristopher Knox, who ranks the Bengals pass-rusher sixth on his trade big board and says the Detroit Lions and San Francisco 49ers are fits as trade partners:
“The Athletic’s Dianna Russini reported in August that the Bengals wanted a 2026 first-round pick and a young defensive player in return for Hendrickson. While they’re not going to drop their price to bargain levels just because Joe Burrow is out for the next three months, they could be more open to counteroffers.”
RELATED: Bengals’ Joe Burrow injury timeline gets multiple new reports
It’s true the Bengals will always pick up the phone and listen to offers in the name of due diligence.
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And while the front office might put just a little more thought into the future and who might be around in 2026 after Burrow’s injury, the team has too much control over Hendrickson still to ship him away at a discount.
The Bengals and Hendrickson just agreed to a contract redo that keeps the option of a franchise tag for 2026 on the table, so things might be headed that way and make sense for both parties. Unless a trade offer comes in that takes that into account and goes up over a first-round pick cost, deadline noise will just be that: annual trade deadline noise.
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This article originally appeared on Bengals Wire: Bengals’ Trey Hendrickson tabbed trade deadline fit for Lions, 49ers