Bengals first-round defensive end Shemar Stewart continues to refuse to participate in the offseason program until he signs his rookie contract. It’s a stance that pushes back against the widespread fan and media assumption that new players will submit to the way things are done.
Earlier this week, for example, Ben Baby of ESPN.com characterized the situation as a “hold-in.”
It’s definitely not. Stewart isn’t under contract. He can’t “hold-in” is he’s not an employee.
He’s no more employed by the Bengals than anyone reading this. (With the exception of, you know, any actual Bengals employees who happen to be reading this.)
As we’ve said before, the position is simple — if you want me to act like an employee, make me an employee.
That leads to the overriding question: What’s the hold up regarding the supposed (but not actual) hold-in? As we understand it, the impasse arises from one remaining issue.
The Bengals and Stewart are haggling over language regarding the potential voiding of his future guarantees.
Per a source with knowledge of the situation, the Bengals want to include a phrase that causes a default in the current year to trigger a default in all remaining years. The problem is that the contract signed by last year’s first-round pick, tackle Amarius Mims, does not not include the language that the Bengals are now attempting to insert into Stewart’s deal. And Mims was taken one spot lower in 2024 (No. 18) than Stewart was picked in 2025 (No. 17).
The key phrase, we’re told, also doesn’t appear in contracts signed earlier this year by receiver Ja’Marr Chase and receiver Tee Higgins.
So, basically, the Bengals hope to pivot from their existing contractual language regarding the voiding of guarantees to new language, with Stewart’s contract being the first one to get it. One one hand, the Bengals should be able to change their policies and procedures. Every business at some point does. On the other hand, in an industry where the contracts for the key employees develop a clear pattern and practice, it’s not typical to make a sudden shift to a new way of doing things.
It would be easy for the Bengals to justify the change by saying, “Well, other teams use contracts that apply a default in one year to all remaining years.” However, other teams pay out more of the signing bonus up front, too.
The point is that the Bengals have an established way of doing things, when it comes to the language of their contracts. They’re looking to make a change as to Stewart, and Stewart is taking a stand on principle. (The principle also becomes highly practical if/when Stewart were to commit a default.)
So before anyone wags a finger at Stewart for not submitting to the way things are done, let’s remember that the core of the current squabble flows from a sudden attempt by the Bengals to change the way contracts have been written.
With Stewart refusing to practice, the Bengals are losing out on the ability to get Stewart as ready as he can be for the start of the 2025 season. Which comes only a year after their failure to re-sign Chase resulted in Chase not being as ready as he could have been for the start of the 2024 season.
Which may have contributed to a Week 1 loss to a New England team that otherwise went 3-13. Which arguably creates a dotted line to January, when a Bengals good enough to get to the Super Bowl missed the playoffs by one game.
Bengals offensive guard Cordell Volson had his contract restructured, according to the team’s official transaction page.
Ben Baby of ESPN reports that Volson will see his base salary reduced but will get more guaranteed money for 2025 and an opportunity to earn more cash with incentives.
Volson received a steep raise for 2025 under the NFL’s Proven Performance Escalator. His salary went from $1.1 million to a non-guaranteed $3.7 million after he played at least 55 percent of the Bengals’ offensive snaps his first three seasons.
Volson has started 48 of a possible 51 games in his three seasons since the Bengals drafted him in the fourth round, and he played 985 snaps last season. But the Bengals benched the left guard at the end of last season.
So, Volson now is competing for a starting job.
He is scheduled to become a free agent in 2026.
After Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins signed their respective new contracts with the Bengals in March, both players credited quarterback Joe Burrow for helping the deals get done.
Chase, in fact, said that Burrow’s public comments about how Cincinnati needed to keep the two receivers were “a big help” in the process.
But when the quarterback was asked in a Tuesday press conference how much he thinks his comments held weight to get Chase and Higgins signed, Burrow had what could be deemed as a surprising answer.
“I don’t know. I hope not a lot,” Burrow said. “I think when you have two guys like that who, like I’ve said, you draft, they play great for you, you win a lot of games, they’re very productive — those are guys you want to reward. And I’m glad they’re here.”
Why does he “hope not a lot”?
“That’s not really the position I want to be in,” Burrow said.
There is some inherent power that comes with being a franchise quarterback, especially one who has signed a second contract after leading his team to the Super Bowl and another conference championship game within his first five seasons. But the point Burrow seems to be making is that he shouldn’t have to put pressure on Cincinnati’s front office when player performance makes it clear what the team should do.
“It’s great when you can reward guys who do it the right way, work really hard to go out and play great on Sundays, and do play great week-in and week-out,” Burrow said when initially asked his thoughts on the team keeping Chase and Higgins. “So, it’s great to have them for the next four years. I’ll be here, too, so we’ve got the core here and that’s exciting.”
Burrow also noted that Cincinnati signing both receivers when many believed they wouldn’t illustrates something about the team’s top brass.
“I just think it says they’re invested in winning,” Burrow said. “I think they want to reward guys they draft that come in and play great. I think that’s a recipe for success.”
Bengals wide receiver Jermaine Burton’s rookie season was a bust, but the team is hopeful that Year Two can be better.
Burton was a third-round pick, but only caught four passes during a year that saw him get benched multiple times due to coaching decisions. One of those benchings came in Week 18 when he did not travel with the team to Pittsburgh in the wake of an assault accusation.
Director of player personnel Duke Tobin was blunt in January when he said Burton has done nothing to deserve a spot on the roster, but head coach Zac Taylor gave a more positive review of Burton’s offseason when he spoke to reporters on Wednesday.
“All he can handle is the present at this point,” Taylor said, via Paul Dehner of TheAthletic.com. “I think he’s done a good job of that this offseason. He’s been in the building. He’s in the building outside of work hours, doing his own thing, prehabbing to get his body right. He has attacked practice the right way, and that is what you can control right now, so I appreciate that much.”
Burton has not left himself much margin for error, but continuing to stay in Taylor’s good graces will be a good way to boost his chances of making a contribution to the team in 2025.
Joe Burrow declined to appear on Season 1 of the Netflix series Quarterback. He is featured in Season 2, which debuts in July.
So what changed?
“They caught me on a good day,” Burrow joked Tuesday, via Jay Morrison of SI.com.
It actually was Peyton Manning, the show’s executive producer, who changed Burrow’s mind about being a part of it along with Jared Goff and Kirk Cousins.
“A big part was Peyton being involved in it,” Burrow said. “I have a lot of respect for him, obviously. What he did, does, as a person, when that guy reaches out to you and asks you to do something . . . most of the time I’m going to say ‘yes.’”
Burrow said, because he trusts Manning, he sees the opportunity as a high-reward, no-risk scenario.
“Only positive things could come out of it,” Burrow said. “He’s going to protect me, protect our team, protect our organization. I have trust in him for saying that and trust that he’s going to do that. I probably wouldn’t have done it if he wasn’t involved, but I have a lot of trust and faith in him to not do anything that would hurt me or the team.”
Hard Knocks cameras already were filming the Bengals in 2024 anyway, so it made it easier for Burrow to accept Manning’s invitation. But Quarterback will address the burglary of Burrow’s home in December, something not mentioned in Hard Knocks after the Bengals nixed it.
“That was definitely a curveball I didn’t quite expect throughout the whole process, but the people involved in it, working on it day to day, were great and weren’t too intrusive,” Burrow said. “I worked with some good people with that.”
Burrow had his final interview with the show last week and has watched screenings of the first few episodes. But he said he will leave it to viewers whether it’s any good or not.
