{"id":736540,"date":"2026-02-07T21:37:48","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T21:37:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/736540\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T21:37:48","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T21:37:48","slug":"espn-reporter-names-cowboys-colts-and-bucs-as-possible-suitors-for-50-million-free-agent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/736540\/","title":{"rendered":"ESPN reporter names Cowboys, Colts and Bucs as possible suitors for $50 million free agent"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Dallas Cowboys<\/a>, Indianapolis Colts<\/a> and Tampa Bay Buccaneers<\/a> will all be in the market for help along the edge this offseason.<\/p>\n

The Cowboys haven’t replaced the production lost in the Micah Parsons trade and the team posted just 35 sacks last season. Improving the pass-rush and defense overall is a big point of emphasis for Dallas this offseason.<\/p>\n

The Bucs finished with two more sacks than the Cowboys, but the production off the edge was not good enough and now Haason Reddick is a pending free agent.<\/p>\n

Indianapolis posted two more sacks than the Bucs and have three edge rushers set to hit free agency in Samson Ebukam, Tyquan Lewis and Kwity Paye.<\/p>\n

Knowing all that, it comes as no surprise that ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler<\/a> named those three teams as possible suitors for Cincinnati Bengals<\/a> defensive end and pending free agent, Trey Hendrickson, who is projected by Spotrac<\/a> to receive a two-year, $50.8 million deal in free agency.<\/p>\n

The Bengals are always good for a few surprises, but a franchise tag for defensive end\u00a0Trey Hendrickson\u00a0would be a mild surprise to me. The relationship has essentially run its course, and the tag will be well above $30 million. Perhaps they could swing a sign-and-trade, but losing him to free agency could equate to a third-round compensatory pick in return if Cincinnati plays it right. The top free agent rusher will have plenty of suitors. Several teams in need of a pass rusher should look into him, including the Cowboys, Buccaneers and Colts.<\/p>\n

Fowler clears up one potential roadblock to Hendrickson hitting free agency.<\/p>\n

The belief has been that the Bengals could slap the franchise tag on Hendrickson and then trade him, but clearly Fowler doesn’t think that scenario is likely.<\/p>\n

That’s huge news for any of Hendrickson’s suitors, as that route would have forced them to trade draft capital before signing the four-time Pro Bowler to a sizeable contract extension.<\/p>\n

We know the Cowboys reportedly had interest in Hendrickson<\/a> at last year’s trade deadline, so it’s logical to consider them a possible suitor.<\/p>\n

Hendrickson has a strong connection to the Colts through his former defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo, who has the same job in Indy.<\/p>\n

The Buccaneers have a fairly positive cap space situation, with the team projected to have $23.8 million to work with<\/a>, the second-most of the three teams listed by Fowler as potential Hendrickson suitors.<\/p>\n

If Hendrickson hits the open market, there are going to be a ton of teams vying for his services. We would expect the Cowboys, Buccaneers and Colts to be among them.<\/p>\n

More NFL news<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Dallas Cowboys, Indianapolis Colts and Tampa Bay Buccaneers will all be in the market for help along…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":736541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2059],"tags":[2005,7,2004,392,2381,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-736540","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-indianapolis-colts","8":"tag-colts","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-indianapolis","11":"tag-indianapolis-colts","12":"tag-indianapoliscolts","13":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116031514444298931","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=736540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/736541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=736540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=736540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=736540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}