Ted Karras Offers Bengals Locker Room Perspective on Lingering Shemar Stewart, Trey Hendrickson Contract Situations

  The Bengals front office and two of its defensive ends are struggling to find contract agreements this offseason, but it's not causing hard feelings in the locker room.

Team captain and longtime veteran center Ted Karras noted the players have no "resentment" towards Shemar Stewart or Trey Hendrickson as they search for contracts to their liking.

"It's not the best-case scenario of how the spring could have gone for our first-round pick. But there is a pretty serious business aspect to our profession. And he's taking counsel from his camp. The main thing I want to say is, I don't think, to either of our defensive ends, that there's any harboring resentment in this locker room to them, and I really hope that both camps can figure this out because we have a really good team. We've had a super productive spring, and you just don't want this to carry over into summer."

All in all, Karras and the team just hope things get resolved before the start of training camp on July 23.

Historically, that's at least wishful thinking for Hendrickson as Cincinnati rarely gets one of these long-term extensions done before August with individual cases. The pairing of Tee Higgins and Ja'Marr Chase together helped spur momentum for those deals this past March.

Cincinnati did sign Amarius Mims to his rookie contract on July 22 last year.

"Obviously everyone can agree that not practicing all spring is an unfortunate outcome of business," Karras noted. "I don't think there's any resentment from players, but I hope that it's resolved before the real, real starts."