The Cincinnati Bengals know what they have in Tee Higgins. The hard part will be keeping him.
Since coming into the NFL in 2020 as Cincinnati’s second-round pick behind No. 1 selection Joe Burrow, the explosive wide receiver has made a home with the Bengals as one of the most reliable weapons in a vaunted offense.
Higgins is coming off a season in which he caught 73 passes for 911 yards and a career-best 10 touchdowns. His best seasons came in 2021 and 2022 when he caught 74 passes each season, went over 1,000 yards receiving each year and totaled 13 touchdowns in the two years.
The Bengals advanced to Super Bowl LVI in 2021 and returned to the AFC Championship the next season, only to lose on a last-second field goal to the Chiefs.
The Bengals know full well that their offense reaches new heights when Higgins joins Burrow and star receiver Ja’Marr Chase on the field together. Higgins makes the Bengals more dynamic, and Burrow and Chase make Higgins—one of the best downfield receivers in the game—more dangerous.
It’s a marriage that benefits both sides.
There’s a blueprint already in place for the Bengals to follow in terms of structuring their offense around a star quarterback and multiple weapons on massive contracts.
The Miami Dolphins pulled it off when they signed Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle around Tua Tagovailoa. More recently—and more notably—the Philadelphia Eagles won a Super Bowl with star receivers A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith and running back Saquon Barkley supporting quarterback Jalen Hurts.
Tee Higgins can get his money anywhere if the Bengals allow him to hit free agency. But that’s almost certainly not going to happen this season. The Bengals are expected to hit Higgins with a franchise tag while simultaneously working out a long-term, multi-year deal with the sixth-year receiver out of Clemson.
The tag this year would be much different than the one placed on him last offseason. That tag was with the intention of having him play on a $21.8 million franchise tender for one season.
This one is to ensure the Bengals get compensation through a trade if a deal can’t be reached. All signs from the Bengals’ front office so far indicate that a framework is in place to get a deal done.
“We want a long-term deal with Tee,” Bengals director of player personnel Duke Tobin said Tuesday. “We’re going through the negotiation process, the details of which I’m not going to share.”
Tobin may not want to share the numbers that have been thrown out there, but they are $28 million to $30 million per season over three or four years, with guaranteed money anywhere between $75 million and $90 million.
The Bengals are trying to get a deal done with Chase that will likely reach $40 million per season with a guarantee north of $100 million, shattering the $35 million annual average of Minnesota star receiver Justin Jefferson last spring. With the NFL cap approaching $280 million, the Bengals believe they have the ability to do both comfortably.
Ever since Burrow came out publicly after a December win in Dallas and said he has every reason to think the team can keep Higgins, there’s been hope the two sides can come together. That hope was strengthened when Higgins fired his agent, David Mulugheta of Athletes First, and went with Rocky Arcenaux, the New Orleans-based agent who also represents Chase.
Burrow wants badly to win now and get back to the Super Bowl that he narrowly missed winning in 2021.
“Urgency is as high as it could get,” Tobin said. “That’s every offseason, though. You know, when you’re a bad football team trying to get to the competitive level, there’s high urgency. When you’re what I consider a high-level football team—and that’s what I consider us—you guys can scoff at it, but I consider us a very high-level football team.
“We’re trying to maximize our guys, and when you have Joe Burrow, you’re trying to fit it around him and give him the best chance to have a Hall of Fame career, and he’s certainly capable of that.”
The Bengals insist this offseason isn’t the first time they’ve made a genuine effort to sign the receiver who would almost immediately become the best free agent on the market. But Tobin says this might be the best progress the team has made.
“We’ve tried to make a lot of runs at Tee. Maybe this is the year,” Tobin said. “He would be valued by other teams, and they sense he’s close to free agency, and those guys don’t get to free agency. Maybe that bids him up, I don’t know. We’re trying to reward him for what he’s done and what we think he will do going forward for us.”
