00:00Two of the Bengals draft picks have not signed their rookie contracts and are not practicing with the team until they do so.
00:05And this has a lot of fans worried, but in this video, I'm going to explain how all this can be resolved.
00:12Hi again, Bengals fans. John Sheeran of A to Z Sports Cincinnati here.
00:16We got some more contract news to talk about, but this time it has nothing to do with Trey Hendrickson.
00:21The Bengals held their annual rookie minicamp this past Friday where they had four draft picks,
00:2513 undrafted free agents, and a handful of tryout players all competing and practicing for the first time all together inside Pacor Stadium.
00:32But as many of you know, the Bengals had more than just four draft picks.
00:36They had six, and two of them did not officially practice with the team, even though they were present for the actual minicamp session.
00:42First-round pick Shamar Stewart and second-round pick Demetrius Knight Jr., they watched practice from the sidelines.
00:47Demetrius Knight took a lot of mental reps in the end zone without actually participating with the team,
00:51but they withheld themselves from practicing because they have not signed their rookie contracts yet.
00:56Now, long gone are the days of elongated rookie contract holdouts prior to the 2011 CBA agreement.
01:03The rookie wage scale has basically eliminated a lot of those problems,
01:06but it's no coincidence that Stewart and Knight's contracts are the longest that the Bengals are taking in terms of getting these finalized.
01:12Stewart is a first-round pick, so it is locked in that he is going to get 100% of his four-year contract completely guaranteed.
01:19And even though the team and the player's agent knows that, oftentimes there is still a waiting game in terms of the actual value of the contract.
01:26The best example of this for the Bengals can be traced back to just one year ago when Amarius Mims signed his rookie contract on July 22nd.
01:33On July 21st is when Dallas Turner signed his rookie contract for the Minnesota Vikings.
01:38Turner was selected by the Vikings one pick ahead of Mims in the first round of the 2024 draft.
01:43So as soon as Turner put pen to paper on his deal, the financials were pretty much set for what Amarius Mims was about to make.
01:48And that could be the case for Shemar Stewart.
01:50The Bengals just may want to make sure that the rookie contracts for the 16th overall pick and the 18th overall pick match their projections so that Shemar Stewart can fall right in between them.
01:59Stewart, of course, is well within his rights to withhold himself from practicing until he signs the contract,
02:03even though there are injury waivers for rookie deals, whatever the case may be.
02:06He just wants to make sure.
02:07But I think out of these two, it's Demetrius Knight's case that's a little bit more interesting to me.
02:11Because second-round picks historically do not get fully guaranteed four-year rookie contracts.
02:16The guarantees of those four-year deals typically run out somewhere in the middle of the third season.
02:21Let's use Chris Jenkins as an example.
02:23He was the Bengals' second-round pick last year.
02:24He got his first two years fully guaranteed.
02:27And then the third year was guaranteed about 60-70% of the way.
02:30And then the fourth year wasn't guaranteed at all.
02:32So the Bengals do have an out in the fourth year of Chris Jenkins' rookie contract.
02:35Now, higher second-round picks can typically get more guaranteed money in there.
02:38But you never see a fully guaranteed rookie contract for someone drafted outside of the first round.
02:43That is, until this year, when wide receiver Jaden Higgins got a fully guaranteed rookie contract from the Houston Texans as the 34th overall pick.
02:52A day later, Carson Swechinger, who was the first pick of the second round to the Cleveland Browns, he also got a fully guaranteed rookie contract.
02:58And now it's possible that Knight and every second-round pick drafted after those guys, they may want fully guaranteed rookie contracts.
03:04And if I were a betting man, which I am sometimes, I would bet that the Bengals do not want to follow this precedent.
03:10Now, the way that this plays out with Knight could be very similar to how it plays out with Stewart, right?
03:14The player that was picked before him and after him, if they sign their deals with certain language, with certain guarantees, then the Bengals just follow suit.
03:21But if I were to guess, I would assume that the majority of teams do not want to follow precedent that the Texans and now Browns have established.
03:27So I think it's going to be the majority of teams playing chicken and hoping that the next player that signs his rookie contract does not get a fully guaranteed deal.
03:34And that this type of precedent only applies to the players who just missed being drafted in the first round.
03:39And with Knight being drafted in the middle of round two, I think the Bengals are probably safe from following suit here.
03:45But that's just the thing. We don't know.
03:47And because we don't know, this contract might take longer to sign compared to Stewart.
03:51But the good news is the Bengals control the rights of both of these players.
03:54They cannot play football if it's not with this team.
03:56And they haven't been paid anything yet.
03:58So the Bengals still hold a lot of leverage here.
04:01It's just going to be fascinating to see how many second-round players do get fully guaranteed deals.
04:05And if the Bengals are going to be forced to include Knight in that group.
04:08Obviously, you would want this to be done as soon as possible because if Stewart and Knight are willing to miss rookie minicamp,
04:12they're probably willing to miss OTAs and everything after that as well.
04:15But they will eventually practice with the team because they will eventually sign contracts.
