It remains to be seen if this is Bengals All-Pro edge rusher Trey Hendrickson’s final season with the team. Hendrickson is playing on a one-year, $30 million deal this season and is an unrestricted free agent.
The chances of this happening are not high, but what if the San Francisco 49ers were to call the Bengals about trading for Hendrickson? There are two reasons why the Bengals wouldn’t do this: One, because they never do things like this. Two, because Hendrickson wouldn’t want to go across the country to San Francisco. At least, I don’t think he would.
Tim Kawakami, a columnist at The San Francisco Standard, explored the idea of the 49ers calling the Bengals about Hendrickson and making a trade for him. The 49ers lost their All-Pro edge rusher, Nick Bosa, to a torn ACL this past Sunday. It’s the same ACL he tore in 2020.
“We’ll look at trades like we always do,” Kyle Shanahan said during his conference call Monday afternoon. “But there’s gotta be trade options that make sense for you and another team. You can’t just do that stuff just to do it.”
The 49ers roster is still a really good roster, even after an offseason where they moved on from some key players from their Super Bowl teams in 2019 and 2023.
But as Kawakami points out, the 49ers from 2019-2023 were ultra-aggressive in building a championship-caliber roster. They traded for All-Pros in Trent Williams (2020) and Christian McCaffrey (2022). This past offseason, they signed multiple of their star players to long-term extensions.
Here is the proposed conditions Kawakami has for a potential Hendrickson trade with the 49ers.
Let’s say that the 49ers offer a trade package involving simple conditions on the picks, such as …
• 2026 first- and third-round picks and a 2027 second-rounder if Hendrickson plays 60% or more of the 49ers’ remaining defensive snaps this season and the 49ers get to the playoffs and he re-signs with the 49ers.
• Which would be lowered to just a first-rounder if Hendrickson plays 60%-plus of the snaps and the 49ers get to the playoffs but Hendrickson doesn’t re-sign with the 49ers.
(A first-round pick for getting to the playoffs but not keeping Hendrickson? Not ideal, but not devastating for the 49ers, knowing they took their best shot this season and would have Bosa coming back.)
• Which would be lowered again to just a second-rounder if Hendrickson doesn’t play 60% of the snaps or the 49ers fail to make the playoffs and Hendrickson doesn’t re-sign.
(It all falls apart and the 49ers give up no more than a second-rounder? That’s not the way they’d want it to work, but that’s not much to risk for the opportunity to go for it this season.)
Potentially getting a first, second, and third-round pick is certainly enticing, especially if the Bengals don’t plan to keep Hendrickson past this season. He’s currently slated to be a free agent next year, though t he franchise tag could be in play.
Would you consider this if you were the Bengals front office?
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