The holdout continues.
The Cincinnati Bengals and their first-round NFL Draft pick, Shemar Stewart are still at a standstill when it comes to negotiating his first NFL contract. While the value of the contract for the 17th overall selection is essentially set by his draft position, the thought is the Bengals and Stewart were going back and forth about the language of the contract.
While most rookies go through contract negotiations, Stewart’s situation is more notable because he hasn’t taken part in Phase 1 or Phase 2 of the Bengals’ offseason program. Most rookies go ahead and practice with an injury waiver while their contracts are worked out.
Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk reports that the issue is, in fact, the language in the contract and broke it down further:
“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 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),” Florio wrote.
Florio added that it is an issue for Stewart’s camp in part because that language doesn’t appear in the deals recently signed by Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins. Those two, of course have proven NFL production while Stewart hasn’t played a down.
Essentially, the Bengals seem to be looking to make a change in how they word the voiding of guarantees in contracts and Stewart is the first contract they are attempting to use the new wording in.
One side will have to at least partially give in at some point, the timing just isn’t great with Trey Hendrickson’s contract issues still lingering.
