Pro Bowl defensive end Trey Hendrickson went on the Pat McAfee Show on Wednesday to discuss stalled talks in his contract, and addressing comments from Bengals executive vice president Katie Blackburn. At the NFL’s annual meeting on Tuesday, Blackburn implied that Hendrickson had been the reason that talks had stalled because he was asking for more money.
Hendrickson said on Wednesday that he initially hoped that Blackburn’s comments, which were published on April 1, was an April Fools’ Day joke.
“That was a little disappointing, ’cause communication has been poor over the last couple of months,” Hendrickson said, adding that the team had not directly talked to his agent and that the lack of communication had been “frustrating.”
Hendrickson currently has a year remaining on his contract, and is due $15.8 million in base salary. The defensive end said Wednesday that the Bengals have told him that they want to work out a deal this year — something that the team has said publicly as well, although less forcefully than they did about Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins ahead of their historic contracts.
