J.J. Watt Had Blunt Message for Bengals, Cowboys on Waiting to Sign Their Star Players

Andy Nesbitt | Mar 9, 2025

Cincinnati Bengals wide receivers Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins celebrate against the Cleveland Browns on Sunday, Dec. 22, 2024. / The Enquirer/Sam Greene / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

NFL free agency officially starts on Wednesday but many teams around the league have been busy over the weekend making deals with their current players, including the Cleveland Browns, who stunned the NFL world by signing Myles Garrett to a historic extension on Sunday.

That signing will likely have an impact on the Bengals' possible upcoming deal with star wide receiver Ja'Marr Chase, who the team said recently they wanted to sign to a historic contract. That number would now be much bigger thanks to Garrett's deal, which makes him the highest-paid non-QB at $40 million a year.

The Bengals, who are looking to keep Chase and Tee Higgins, are learning a tough lesson that if you wait to lock in your stars, the price is only going to go up the longer you wait.

J.J. Watt had a message for the Bengals and Cowboys, who will face the same issue with star linebacker Micah Parsons.

"Reward your players earlier and reap the benefits in the long run," Watt wrote in a reply to tweet that laid out how much more money Higgins, Chase and Parsons are going to get now compared to if deals got done a year ago. "Dragging it out not only ends up costing more, it creates unnecessary tension. The longer you wait, the higher the price."

Here's the tweet Watt was referring too:

Not to harp on the Bengals and Cowboys (again) but the Myles Garrett deal really hammers home why their approaches of dragging stuff out is the worst way to do things.

Two years ago they could have signed or traded Tee for 22M a year.

A year ago they could have done Chase for…

— Brett Kollmann (@BrettKollmann) March 9, 2025

It's going to be interesting to see what happens to those star players now going forward, because things got a lot more expensive on Sunday.

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