Yesterday, 04:54 PM
(Yesterday, 04:44 PM)Sled21 Wrote: Bell never recovered the money he lost sitting out. And if Trey fakes an injury to get out of playing, the whole league will know he did it and his value would drop exponentially. Not to mention, next year he's even a year older. His best move if they don't get a deal done is to play on his existing deal, have a great season, then go somewhere else on a new deal.
Bell was a RB, short careers and a non-premium position. He also sat out the whole year rather than showing up long enough to get credit for the season.
Chris Jones made his money back.
Hendrickson won't be able to go somewhere else on a new deal if he plays and has a great season. The Bengals will just franchise tag him, which this year was just $24.7m for DEs. If he plays that and does well, they'll just franchise tag him again for 20% more (which would be $29.7m just going off the 2024 number). So if he just plays and plays well, he's stuck here for about 3yr/$70m (probably a bit more since it'd be 2025 tag numbers), which is still $38m shy of Watt's new guaranteed money alone, and $53m shy of the total and is all dependent upon him playing at a high level the entire time versus guarantees.
Both numbers he'd be short of are significantly bigger than the $8m he'd miss out on sitting out half the season.
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