Cincinnati Bengals Pending Star Free Agent Widely Considered Top Player Who Could Hit Market

CINCINNATI — The Bengals may have to franchise tag Trey Hendrickson again if they want to keep him off what figures to be a frothy open market for the 31-year-old edge rusher.

Both ESPN and Pro Football Focus have him ranked first among all pending free agents this coming March. Free agency opens on March 9, while the franchise tag window opens a week earlier on March 3.

ESPN writer Matt Bowen still loves what he could bring to a team, despite experiencing his first injury-riddled season in 2025.

"Hendrickson is a relentless defender off the edge, with a deep toolbox of counters and a knack for making plays late in the down," Bowen wrote. "In seven games this season, he had four sacks. His 17.5 sacks and 65 pressures in 2024 were league highs. Hendrickson would immediately upgrade just about any team's defensive line."

PFF had similar thoughts on their same pick for the best player to potentially go on the market.

"Hendrickson battled injuries throughout the 2025 season but still ranked sixth among all edge defenders in PFF pass-rush grade (90.0)," PFF wrote. "He has now posted five consecutive seasons with a PFF pass-rush grade above 85.0 and generated 23 total pressures on 177 pass-rush snaps this year."

Tagging Hendrickson makes a lot of sense if it eventually leads to a trade for a mid-round draft pick in April.

It feels like a longshot that the two sides agree to any type of long term agreement, so ripping the Band-Aid off now and getting a draft asset right away could be the best path as opposed to tagging for a full salary-cap hit around $34.8 million, using him on the defense this fall, and then maybe getting a compensatory pick for him next year (which only happens if they don't replace him with another signing in 2027 free agency).

Hendrickson has given a half-decade of awesome play to the Bengals as their greatest free-agent signing ever. He re-worked a one-year, $29 million contract with the team to play for them in 2025.

"That one was contentious," Bengals director of player personnel Duke Tobin said about the Hendrickson contract saga."There are a lot of contentious deals. We’re not on an island by ourselves in that kind of stuff. That’s the way of the world. We have to place a value on a player. They’ll place their own value on themselves. We have to come to something that makes sense for both.

"When I negotiate with a player or agent, I’m not negotiating against that player or agent. I’m negotiating on behalf of the rest of our football team. On behalf of the city of Cincinnati, which wants the best football team it can have. I’m not saying you deserve less, and it’s isolated in a cocoon. I’m trying to preserve as much as I can to do other things that will benefit all of us."

Check out more on the Hendrickson situation here from James Rapien.

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