If the Bengals want rookie first-round pick Shemar Stewart in training camp, they will have to cave, Adam Schefter believes. The pass rusher out of Texas A&M has yet to take the field in Cincinnati, tied up in a contract dispute with the front office. The team changed the language of its contracts this offseason, and he doesn\u2019t want to be the \u201cexample\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he\u2019s dug in on the language\u201d, Schefter said of Stewart on the Rothman and Ice Show<\/a>. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t want to be the first one and be made an example of. The Bengals haven\u2019t had this language before. Other teams have had it, but the Bengals haven\u2019t, and he doesn\u2019t want to be the guy. He seems unwilling to budge\u201d.<\/p>\n If you ask five different insiders, you will hear five different explanations about what the Bengals changed and why. What we know is Shemar Stewart is the first Bengals first-round pick to face this language, but it is similar to language other teams use. To the best of my understanding, the language change makes it easier for teams to potentially recoup guaranteed money.<\/p>\n Exacerbating the issue is the fact that Stewart has also not signed a participation waiver. Many rookies practice without a signed contract, the waiver giving them protection in the event of injury. Stewart and his agent, however, did not like the language in that document, either. To Schefter, they seem equally invested in making a point as the Bengals are.<\/p>\n \u201cMy guess is he\u2019s gonna win that argument\u201d, he speculates, meaning the Bengals will cave to Stewart. \u201cWhat, are they gonna wait and say, \u2018No, we\u2019re not gonna give him [that] language?\u2019. Try to do it another year with a later pick. This would not be the time to do that. And they need him in for his own personal development, for the strength of that defense. The longer they go without him, the more time he misses, the further he\u2019s set back, the more [it] slows his development, which doesn\u2019t help the defense, which puts this team behind the 8-ball\u201d.<\/p>\n Another variable at play here is Cincinnati\u2019s ongoing contract dispute with Trey Hendrickson. An All-Pro pass rusher, he has expressed an unwillingness to play under his current contract. Like Stewart<\/a>, it doesn\u2019t appear they are in a rush to complete a contract with him.<\/p>\n It all begs the question of how this reads in the locker room. Willie Colon speculated that Bengals players are \u201cnervous and unsettled<\/a>\u201d about how the team is handling Hendrickson and Stewart. After all, everybody wants their turn at the till, and they want it to be as painless as possible.<\/p>\n Bengals owner Mike Brown does not part easily with money, but he has on offense lately. Clearly, he believes that is where the team\u2019s strength lies, but he seems to be forgetting its weakness\u2014the defense\u2014is holding the offense back. Right now, the Bengals\u2019 primary accomplishment is inhibiting the development of an improved pass rush<\/a> with Trey Hendrickson and Shemar Stewart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If the Bengals want rookie first-round pick Shemar Stewart in training camp, they will have to cave, Adam…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[4506,1822,349,4507,4508,99,3795],"class_list":{"0":"post-3919","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-adam-schefter","9":"tag-cincinnati-bengals","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-rothman-and-ice","12":"tag-shemar-stewart","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-trending"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}