Trey Hendrickson Core Muscle Surgery Ends Season

Trey Hendrickson Core Muscle Surgery Ends Season

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today, we're wrestling with
a story that on the surface seems like just another
injury report, but it has revealed itself to be this
really fascinating and frankly painful case study in the modern
business of football.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
It really has.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
We're talking about the core muscle surgery and season ending
news for Bengals defensive end Trey Hendrickson.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
A huge blow for that team, it is.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
And you know, when a star player goes down, the
headlines are all about sacks and tackles lost. But our
mission today is to go much much deeper. We've pulled
together everything, articles, reports, sour gap breakdowns to really understand
the three distinct disasters this one injury has triggered.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
It's not just one thing, it's a cascade exactly.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
You got the medical confusion, you've got the competitive crisis
this seals for them, and then this very expensive, long
term financial problem that was actually baked in months ago.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
That's the part of things most people miss. The financial
tale on this is long.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
Hendrickson is a raining all pro. His loss is just staggering.
So this deep dive is our shortcut to understanding not
just what happened. But why this specific injury at this
specific time is pretty much the absolute worst case scenario
for the Bengals. Okay, let's unpack.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
This, let's do it and the complexity it really starts
with the injury itself.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
It's a mess.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
It is. What we know now is that he's scheduled
for that core muscle surgery later this week. The decision
was made after he saw a specialist who basically confirmed
that the conservative.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
Route rest and rehab.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Right, that just wasn't gonna work. It wasn't healing.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
And that failure of the conservative treatment that's so critical here,
isn't it. It tells you this wasn't just a simple strain.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
No, not at all. This is something structural. And when
you look at the recovery timeline, we're talking about approximately
six weeks.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Six weeks and right there that's the bowl game. That's
why his season is likely over.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
Absolutely. But before we even get to the schedule, the
road to even get to that operating table was just
it was baffling. The shifting dive dignosis was fascinating.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
It's the definition of a moving target. So he first
goes down Week six against Green Bay misses the second half,
and the initial report is a back injury.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Okay, that makes sense, lower back stuff, common for a
pass rusher.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
But then he misses the next game against the Steelers,
and suddenly the injury report pivots. Now it's a hip issue.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
So they're chasing the pain. You know, the back, the hip,
they're all connected through the core, so they're trying to
pinpoint the source, and it kept moving.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
The most recent report wasn't even just hip anymore. It
was hip.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Elvis, which really tells you how interconnected that whole area is.
You pull one thing, damage one insertion point, and the
pain can radiate and show up somewhere else.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
That seems to be the key insight here. These core
muscle injuries are just notoriously difficult to pin down.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
They are. And when reporters finally pressed coach Zach Taylor
for some clarity, you know, trying to get him to
name the body part, his quote was so telling.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
What did he say?

Speaker 2 (02:58):
He just said the issue was quote.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Kind of all that, kind of all that. I mean,
that's somehow both the most honest and the most frustrating
update you could ever get.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
It is. It sounds vague, but it perfectly captures the
diagnostic nightmare they were in. How do you treat something
effectively when the root cause is so diffused.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
You can't, And we saw what happened when they tried.
They arrested him, then tried to bring him back.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
In Week eight against the Jets, right he was listed
as questionable.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
He plays a few snaps in the first half and boom,
reaggravates it severely, missus the entire second half of that
that brutal thirty nine thirty eight loss, and that was it.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
That was the end of the line.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
He hasn't practiced, hasn't played it down since that reaggravation.
Feels like the moment everyone realized this wasn't an injury
management problem anymore.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
It became a structural repair problem, and that's what led
to the specialist and ultimately the surgery we're talking about now.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Okay, so that's the medical mystery solved. Sort of. Let's
pivot now to the on field relevance because this isn't
happening in a vacuum. This is happening at the worst
possible time for this team.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
If we connect this to the bigger picture, Yeah, the
timing is just brutal. The math here is pretty simple
and it's painful for Bengals fans. They're what four nine,
four to nine with only four games left in the
regular season.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
Okay, so four games left. Explain why that six week
recovery timeline officially closes the book on his season.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
Well, there are three games behind the division leading Steelers,
who are sitting at seven to six, a.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
Three game deficit with four to play. That's a tall order.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
It's almost impossible. They need to win out and have
the Steelers completely collapse. The wild card chances are for
all intents and purposes zero.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
And the key thing here is if they don't win
the division, their season just ends.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
Exactly. Their last game is the first week of January.
His six week recovery timeline takes him into mid to
late January. The season will be long over for the
team by the time he's healthy.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
So there's just no runway left. He is officially done
no matter what happens in these last four games.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
It just highlights how fragile and NFL season is, and
we have to remind people who exactly they are losing here.
This isn't just some rotational guy.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
No, No, let's talk about the caliber of player Trey Hendrickson.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
Is, he is a true game wrecker. Last season, he
led the entire league with seventeen point five sacks, just
a phenomenal number.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
Earned his fourth straight Pro Bowl too, which speaks to
his consistency it does.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
But the biggest honor, the thing that really puts him
in that elite tier, was being named an All Pro.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
And All Pro. That's a title a Bengals player hadn't
earned since twenty fifteen. That tells you he's not just good,
he's a star.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
He's one of the very best of what he does.
So you take that kind of pressure, that kind of
disruptive force off a defense that has already struggled, and
it's devastating.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
It really feels like this news just confirms what we
already suspected. The competitive part of this deep dive is, well,
it's over. The season is done because their defensive anchor
is gone. It is, But honestly, that's only half the story.
Now we get to the deeper business narrative because the
re sting here, the part that's going to last is
how this injury slams right into the contract turmoil from

(06:06):
before the season even started.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
Yes, here's where it gets really interesting.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
The organization already took a huge gamble just to get
him on the field this year.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
That's exactly right. This injury is really just the final
crushing chapter of what was already a very tumultuous year
financially speaking.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
So layout that timeline for us, How do we get
to this point with the contract?

Speaker 2 (06:27):
It all kicked off in the off season. Hendrickson comes
off that all pro year and he wants a long
term extension. He wants to be paid like the elite player.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
He is, which is fair. But the Bengals hesitated.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
They did, and maybe they were wary of big, long
term guarantees for a defensive lineman. So when they balked,
Hendrickson used his leverage the trade request. The trade request,
this is your defensive cornerstone, your best player on that
side of the ball, actively trying to get out.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
That puts the front office in an impossible position.

Speaker 2 (06:58):
A terrible spot. Their championship win is right now, you
trade him, you probably slam shut. You don't pay him,
you risk a holdout, a locker room distraction.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
And he did hold out right. He skipped the start
of training camp.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
He did just to show he was serious, and eventually
they hammered out a deal.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
But it wasn't the long term deal he wanted, was it.
It was more of a short term fix.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
That's the critical detail. It was a one year, very
expensive band aid. The team agreed to give him a
massive fourteen million dollar raise, fourteen million including incentives. It
brought his potential salary for this one season up to
thirty million dollars.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
But wait, at the time, wasn't that scene as a win.
They avoided a holdout, they got their star player back.
Seems a little harsh to call it a mistake now,
just because he got hurt.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
And that's the nuance here. It was a necessary gamble.
They had to do it to keep the season alive.
But it was a calculated risk that well, it backfire.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
Because they paid that huge premium, the fourteen million dollars
for one guaranteed year of Elite play.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
And they didn't get it. They got about half a year.
So the return on investment for that fourteen million dollars is,
you know, maybe fifty cents on the dollar in terms
of actual games played.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
And now we get to the real long term poison
pill of this short term fix the salary cap implications.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
That contract had a built in self destruct mechanism. What
do you mean the deal they negotiated, it will automatically
void five days after this upcoming super Bowl.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
Okay, so explain what that means when a contract voids.
This is where the NFL salary cap gets really complicated.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
It is it all comes down to how they paid
him that guaranteed money in their raise, probably as a
signing bonus. Teams love to spread that cap hit out
over the life of the contract, including using fake or
void years.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
At the end, so they're just kicking the can down
the road financially exactly.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
You get the cap relief now, but the bill always
comes due. When that contract voids after the Super Bowl,
all of that bonus money that was assigned to those
future void years it comes rushing forward.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
It accelerates onto the current years cap.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
All at once, and that's what creates what we call dead.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
Money, money that counts against your salary cap for a
player who isn't even on your team anymore.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
Precisely, in this specific case, the void is going to
hit the Bengals with six point five million dollars in
dead money against their salary cap for the twenty twenty.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
Six season, two years from now.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
Two years from now. So the story is this. They
paid a fourteen million dollar premium for the twenty twenty
five season, a season cut short by injury, and now
they also have a six point five million dollar penalty
on their twenty twenty six books.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
That is just it's astonishing. They bought one year of performance,
they got half a year, and now they have a
financial hangover two years later. It's just a brutal reminder
that football is a business of calculated.

Speaker 2 (09:41):
Risks, and injury is the one variable you can never
truly account for.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
You can't predict a mysterious hippobilza's back injury that ends.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
A season, and that six point five million dollars isn't
nothing that limits their flexibility in twenty twenty six. That's
the cost of a solid starting player, or money you
need to re sign one of your own guys. Sting
of this injury is going to last a lot longer
than his recovery.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
So what does this all mean. Let's try to tie
it all together. We've seen this incredible medical complexity and
injury so confusing the coach could only call it kind
of all that.

Speaker 2 (10:12):
An injury that just wouldn't heal without surgery, right, and.

Speaker 1 (10:15):
We've established the competitive reality. This injury is the final
nail in the coffin for the Bengals four to nine season.
It ends the year for their most dominant defensive player.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
And then we connected all of that to the financial fallout.
The team's necessary gamble to keep a star happy with
a huge raise. It only got them half a season
of work, and.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
It leaves them with a concrete six point five million
dollars dead cap penalty that they won't even feel until
twenty twenty six.

Speaker 2 (10:40):
It's a perfect storm of medical bad luck hitting a
risky business decision.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
The attempt to save today directly cost them tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
It really does raise a powerful question for you, the listener,
to think about. Given this situation, the big premium pay,
the injury, the future dead cap hit, how does a
front office balance that in imdiate desperate need to placate
a star player to keep a championship window open versus
maintaining long term financial health When the unpredictable reality of

(11:08):
a severe injury.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
Strikes, it's a zero sum game, it is.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
It's a game of risk assessment and in the case
of Trey Henderson and the Bengals, they ultimately paid twice