Bengals WR Tee Higgins has requested a trade.
This comes shortly after the team elected to use the franchise tag on Higgins. The franchise tag, if Higgins plays on it, would pay him just under $22M on a 1 year deal. Despite the hefty salary, the tag is often unpopular amongst players due to its lack of long term stability.
Higgins reportedly would like to remain in Cincinnati long term, but the team has supposedly not negotiated a long term deal with the player since March of last year. However, it should also be noted that the two sides agreed not to negotiate during the season.
It remains to be seen what will come of this. Anyone who has followed this team long enough knows that the Bengals will not just jump up and trade him simply because of a request. They let Carson Palmer sit out half of the 2011 season before shipping him off to the Raiders. Jessie Bates, in 2022, did not request a trade, but held out from training camp when he was franchise tagged. He ended up playing that season for the Bengals. And Jonah Williams requested a trade last offseason after Orlando Brown was signed to play LT. Williams ended up rescinding the request, and made the move to RT.
The point is, the Bengals will only trade him if they get the compensation that they are looking for, and they will not feel any pressure to get it done quickly, or at all. I would expect a 1st round pick is enough to get it done. Or perhaps a 2nd and something else. But that is speculation on my end. This will be an interesting story to monitor in the coming weeks, or however long it takes to unfold.
In other news, the compensatory draft selections for 2024 have been announced.
The Bengals initially received two 6th round picks. However, the possibility of an error being made was later brought up, and gained some steam among the Bengals fan base.
What initially happened was that Jessie Bates had just missed the cutoff to net the Bengals a 3rd round pick. Instead, he got them a 4th rounder, which was negated by the Orlando Brown signing.
But the NFL, credit to them, went back and reviewed it, later noting that an error was made. Bates did make the 3rd round cutoff. And since a player can not negate a signing from a higher classification, Orlando Brown no longer negates the pick that the Bengals get due to Jessie Bates departing in free agency. Instead, he will negate the earlier of the two 6th round picks that they were set to receive.
To sum it up, the Bengals will get a 3rd round and 6th round compensatory selection in the 2024 NFL Draft, bringing their current total to 9 selections.
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