Bengals can fill all their needs in Trey Hendrickson trade with this AFC partner

The Cincinnati Bengals have major issues at multiple positions as the 2025 season draws closer, with no obvious solutions in sight to solve any of them.

As long as the Bengals continue to be stingy on a new contract with reigning NFL sack champion Trey Hendrickson, they'll be listening to trade offers. Their high asking price is an innately hypocritical stance to take, and they're quite simply sabotaging themselves by leaving Hendrickson hanging.

But say a trade does have to happen to bring about a resolution to this avoidable standoff. Based on rece nt buzz from insiders who would know, one ascending AFC team stands out above the rest to be a prospective Hendrickson trade partner.

New England Patriots are clear front-runners in Trey Hendrickson sweepstakes

Sources tell the Boston Herald's Andrew Callahan that edge defender Anfernee Jennings and safety Kyle Dugger are on the trade block for the

Given that Jennings is an excellent run defender and Dugger is a more proven, surer-tackling box safety than anyone on the Bengals' roster, they both make sense to target in a trade. Plus, I've bandied about former New England first-round pick Cole Strange as a player of interest for Cincinnati on more than one occasion in my short time in this space.

No trade package for Hendrickson is goin g to replace what the Bengals would lose by shipping him away. His impact is singular. There isn't another elite pass-rusher out there who can come close to matching Hendrickson's individual production.

That's why trading the 30-year-old vet in the first place makes zero sense to me, or most fans. It just seems like there's so much bad blood at this point that, at a certain point, Hendrickson being a healthy inactive would be more of a glaring distraction than anything else.

A resolution needs to be reached very, very soon. Should this drag into Week 1 and beyond, Cincinnati's brass will see its already-poor approval rating crash to historically low levels. Meanwhile, they'll have done nothing to address what appears to be a pretty rough-looking defense on paper, especially sans Hendrickson.

Just because needs are filled, it doesn't mean the Bengals should trade Trey Hendrickson

Full transparency: I'm so tired of talking about this. It's the same nonsense ad nauseam. The Patriots, however, c ould offload three players they view as backups and give those players a fresh start in Cincinnati, where they'd have a real chance to fill in key roles, or earn far more playing time at the very least.

Strange's recovery from a torn patellar tendon makes him a flawed candidate to seize the right guard job. Dugger is among the NFL's worst safeties in pass coverage, with a PFF grade that ranked 116th out of 121 qualifiers in 2024. Jennings would raise the floor of the Bengals' sieve of a run defense, yet he only has 5.5 career sacks on 831 pass rush snaps.

So while a Hendrickson trade with the Pats could net as many as three fringe starters, along with a premium draft pick if the Bengals send back another player, it's still not a worthy transaction. That tells you all you need to know about how stupid the Hendrickson saga really is.

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