Lions remain unlikely to adjust plans on trade for defensive star, even with Bengals losing Joe Burrow to injury
It’s not hard to understand what’s going on in the minds of Detroit Lions fans right now. The Cincinnati Bengals are in trouble. Joe Burrow is set to possibly miss the rest of this season, or at least three months, with a severe turf toe injury that requires surgery. So, of course, your brain goes, […]
It’s not hard to understand what’s going on in the minds of Detroit Lions fans right now. The Cincinnati Bengals are in trouble. Joe Burrow is set to possibly miss the rest of this season, or at least three months, with a severe turf toe injury that requires surgery. So, of course, your brain goes, “Well, that’s it for the Bengals, they should probably sell everything off and rebuild.”
You might also look at this as an opportunity for the Lions to use the Bengals’ problems against them and pry Trey Hendrickson out of Cincinnati and bring him to Detroit. There are just several problems with this, and I hate to throw cold water all over you, but shifting everything a month down the road isn’t likely to change the minds of either team.
Why a Trey Hendrickson trade to the Lions is still incredibly unlikely to happen
The thing nobody ever considers, for starters, is that the Bengals are still the Bengals. This is the most stubborn team in all of professional sports. I mean, they just fought with Hendrickson all summer long about simply reworking his deal or paying him more money.
Maybe a normal team would turtle on the season and trade players away to get assets to build an offensive line for the best quarterback they’ve ever had, but the Bengals are not a normal team. They don’t trade players away at the deadline.
Seriously, in the last 10 years, the Bengals have made one trade deadline move in which they traded a player away. That was in 2020 when they sent Carlos Dunlap to the Seahawks. That’s it. It’s not like this team hasn’t been bad before. It’s not like they haven’t been bad recently or dealt with a Burrow injury recently. They just don’t trade. Of all reasons why this is unlikely to get done, it’s the Bengals and not the Lions.
But, on the Lions’ side of things, you might still think this pass rush is bad, but the Lions may feel they have reasons to think it’s good. Everyone has written Marcus Davenport’s eulogy, but the Lions don’t seem to think it’s over for him, and even he didn’t appear like a guy whose season was over for the 12th time in his career when the media spoke to him on Sunday. You’d think he’d not even want to talk to us.
Al-Quadin Muhammad has looked sharp early, and he’s expected to see an expanded role going forward. Josh Paschal could be back soon, and Ahmed Hassanein is expected to return at some point this season. While he’s not an edge, Alim McNeil is due back soon, too. The point is that there’s reason to wait if you’re the Lions. Personally, I don’t think they should, but I can understand why they’d want to.
The other thing is, there’s this idea that the Lions could bring him in and just not extend him, and that’s that, but he just spent an entire summer fighting with a team about an extension. Do you think that just went away because they reworked his deal a little bit? No, this guy still wants a long-term deal, and he wants to get paid. I agree that his age is likely to prevent a team from paying him a ton of money and giving him a long deal. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want it anymore.
The Lions are in a position where they’re still trying to finalize a massive deal for Aidan Hutchinson that would likely make him the highest-paid non-quarterback in the league. On top of that, they still want to get deals done with Brian Branch, Sam LaPorta, Jahmyr Gibbs, and Jack Campbell. Which brings it to the next point.
When the Packers reached out to the Bengals for a trade for Hendrickson before they eventually went with Parsons, the going rate, according to NFL insider Ian Rapoport, was a standout player and a mid-round pick.
If you’re the Lions, what standout player are you giving away for a 31-year-old edge rusher? The Bengals aren’t looking for just some guy. They won’t take a backup. They want a baller. Let’s say it’s Branch, for example. Are you willing to give up one of the best defensive players in the league right now for a 31-year-old player? Probably not, right?
Then there’s the mid-round pick part of it. The Lions already traded away both of their third-round picks in the 2026 NFL Draft. It’s not hard to see them moving another one for a great player. There you go, that’s the one thing that isn’t a holdup.
I’m not saying that the Lions won’t make a trade at the deadline, but I am saying that if you’re holding your breath for this one, you will pass out and probably need to go to the hospital.
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