{"id":27313,"date":"2025-07-02T23:07:22","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T23:07:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/breakingnews.azontree.com\/?p=27313"},"modified":"2025-07-02T23:07:22","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T23:07:22","slug":"nfl-insider-says-cincinnati-bengals-draft-pick-doesnt-have-participation-agreement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/breakingnews.azontree.com\/?p=27313","title":{"rendered":"NFL Insider Says Cincinnati Bengals&#8217; Draft Pick Doesn&#8217;t Have Participation Agreement"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"post-featured-container-id\">\n<div id=\"post-featured\">\n<div>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/heavy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/ShemarStewart-2211829731-e1751494328643.jpg?quality=65&amp;strip=all&amp;w=780\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 820px) 95vw, 780px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/heavy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/ShemarStewart-2211829731-e1751494328643.jpg?quality=65&amp;strip=all&amp;w=780 780w, https:\/\/heavy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/ShemarStewart-2211829731-e1751494328643.jpg?quality=15&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1100 1100w, https:\/\/heavy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/ShemarStewart-2211829731-e1751494328643.jpg?quality=35&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1350 1350w\" alt=\"NFL Insider Says Cincinnati Bengals' Draft Pick Doesn't Have Participation Agreement\" width=\"780\" height=\"520\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The Cincinnati Bengals are one of two teams that have yet to sign their 2025 first-round pick to a contract. The Denver Broncos still haven\u2019t signed University of Texas cornerback Jahdae Barron, the 20th-overall pick. And, of course, the Bengals are at quite the impasse with the 17th-overall selection, Texas A&amp;M edge rusher Shemar Stewart.<\/p>\n<p>Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk has taken a look at the lack of a participation agreement with Stewart, which would have allowed him to participate in OTAs and minicamp without the fear of injury.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn theory, a participation agreement gives the player financial protection against an injury suffered while taking part in the offseason program,\u201d Florio writes. \u201cThe goal is to give the player the same deal he would have gotten, if he hadn\u2019t been injured.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPFT has compared the Bengals\u2019 participation agreement with the language used by another team. There are very real differences.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor example, Cincinnati\u2019s agreement applies if the player \u201csustains a disabling NFL football-related injury.\u201d At least one other team removes the phrase \u201cdisabling,\u201d which introduces ambiguity and (potentially) an avenue for the team lawyering their way out of the deal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Bengals\u2019 agreement also doesn\u2019t contain a clear commitment to give Stewart a contract commensurate with being the 17th overall pick in the draft. The other team\u2019s expressly says that the terms \u201cshall be commensurate\u201d with the player\u2019s slot.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>The Bengals are making this much more difficult than it needs to be<\/h2>\n<p>Is anyone surprised by any of this? The Bengals almost enjoy shooting themselves in the foot when they can. Less than a month ago, Stewart\u2019s agency responded to a journalist on X who mistakenly (although the point was the same) said that Stewart was drafted No. 18 and that last year\u2019s first rounder Armarius Mims was No. 17.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOther way around,\u201d the agency said. \u201cShemar is the higher pick at 17.. they want his contract different even though he is the higher pick.. last year they picked 18.. even more reason.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The bottom line is that it looks bad when things are so frustrating that your agency is discussing these things publicly. So, not only can they not get Stewart signed, they can\u2019t even hammer out an agreeable participation agreement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAlso, the other team\u2019s deal has a paragraph that explains the purpose of the agreement: To provide financial protection for an injury resulting from participation in the offseason program, and to put him in approximately the same financial position he would have been in, but for the injury,\u201d Florio continues when comparing the Bengals\u2019 language to another teams\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFrankly, no player should ever sign a participation agreement,\u201d he writes. \u201cIf the team wants the player to behave like an employee, the team should make the player an employee by signing him to a contract.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn Stewart\u2019s case, a participation agreement that would have more clearly promised to give him the financial package he would have gotten without the injury would have gotten him on the field for the offseason program \u2014 and it would have deferred the thornier issue of working out final contract language until training camp.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>It\u2019s the same contractual language the Bengals used in the past<\/h2>\n<p>For whatever reason, the Bengals have decided to dig their heels in and start doing things a different way. Considering the team\u2019s situation on defense (a bad defense with its best defender holding out and Stewart not with the team), you\u2019d think that now wouldn\u2019t be a great time to turn over a new leaf.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs to the contract language, Stewart has asked for the same default language used in the contract signed last year by tackle Amarius Mims, who was taken with the 18th overall pick,\u201d Florio writes. \u201cThat\u2019s relevant to the participation agreement because, as it relates to the participation agreement, Stewart was told (we\u2019re told) that it wouldn\u2019t be fair to use different language from the language in Mims\u2019s participation agreement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf that logic is good enough for the participation agreement, it should be good enough for the contract, too. But the Bengals won\u2019t use the same default language as to guaranteed money for Stewart as they used for Mims.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s tough to see people criticize QB Joe Burrow for anything with regards to the state of the Bengals, yet people do. The standoff with Stewart is just another glaring example of how incredible it is that this team went to a Super Bowl in recent memory.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PFT&#8217;s Florio says that Cincinnati Bengals first-rounder Shemar Stewart&#8217;s lack of participation agreement kept him out of offseason workouts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27314,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cincinnati-bengals"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>NFL Insider Says Cincinnati Bengals&#039; Draft Pick Doesn&#039;t Have Participation Agreement - Breaking News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/breakingnews.azontree.com\/?p=27313\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"NFL Insider Says Cincinnati Bengals&#039; 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