Shemar Stewart’s contractual holdout with the Cincinnati Bengals has lingered to the start of training camp and the team’s front office personnel want to see the first-round pick suiting up sooner rather than later.
“I hope Shemar comes in. He needs to be here,” Bengals director of personnel Duke Tobin said Monday at the team’s media luncheon, according to ESPN.
Cincinnati is trying to set a precedent with rookie contracts that allows ownership to void future guarantees, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer. Stewart is asking that his contract language mirror the team’s last first-round picks.
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Tobin said he doesn’t “blame” Stewart for his holdout and is “listening to advice he’s paying for” from his representation.
The significant disagreement in contract language centers around a “conduct detrimental to football” stipulation that could negate guaranteed money, according to Bengals owner Mike Brown.
“If we get a player that gets involved in something like that, or does something that is just unacceptable, then guess what? I don’t want to pay him,” Brown said Monday per The Cincinnati Enquirer. “We say that if he got involved in conduct detrimental [to football], we’d have the right to terminate the guaranteed part of the back years. His agent says, ‘oh, no, you can terminate the guaranteed part only for the remaining part of the year in which the event occurred.’ Oddly, something like this has never occurred in my memory with us. I don’t think it’s gonna occur. So, we’re sitting here arguing over something that I think is pretty remote.”
Stewart has spent the last few weeks back at Texas A&M, working out and staying in game shape, but is not eyeing a return to the Aggies, according to coach Mike Elko.
Stewart attended Cincinnati’s minicamp this summer and said he has been going to meetings and taking notes in addition to studying the playbook.
Not that it affects Stewart’s situation, but ownership is already in the middle of a contract standoff with fellow edge rusher Trey Hendrickson, made it clear that he won’t be suiting up this season unless he gets a new deal.
Stewart previously mentioned Hendrickson’s absence from minicamp amid his own negotiations and emphasized that he is fully within his right to not sign the contract the Bengals have presented.
If he signs, Stewart will land a four-year, $18.94 million rookie contract that’s fully guaranteed based on his slot from April’s first round as the 17th overall pick. Cincinnati argues that some of that money should not be paid if he gets into trouble during the four-year agreement.
“I’m 100 percent right,” Stewart said about his opinion of contract terms.”I’m not asking for nothing you all have never done before, but in you all case, you all just want to win an argument instead of winning more games.”
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Author: Brad Crawford
July 21, 2025 | 1:56 pm
