The 26-year-old receiver has long said he wanted to stay in Cincinnati if the sides can come to an agreement. It’s possible the Bengals could trade Higgins if it becomes clear a long-term deal can’t be arranged, or he could play out another season on the tag.
Teams have until 4 p.m. Tuesday to designate their franchise players.
“Whenever I’m in charge of a football team, I want Tee Higgins, so I’m going to do what I can to get Tee Higgins,” Tobin said last week at the NFL Combine. “Our preference with Tee Higgins is to do a long-term agreement. Always has been. It continues to be, and we’ll work hard to get that done.”
Higgins cryptically posted a blue cap emoji on social media – which usually means “lies” – shortly after Tobin spoke to reporters at the Combine last week, leaving an impression he and his representatives saw things differently in terms of how the Bengals were handling negotiations.
The Bengals and Higgins have been discussing a long-term extension for three years now. He played on a tag last year, worth $20.6 million, and that is now worth 120 percent more for a guaranteed $26.2 million.
A sixth-year player in 2025, Higgins originally was a second-round draft pick of the Bengals in 2020, behind quarterback Joe Burrow. In 70 career regular-season games for Cincinnati, he has caught 330 passes for 4,595 yards and 34 touchdowns. He has recorded at least 900 receiving yards in four of his five NFL seasons, including consecutive 1,000-yard campaigns in 2021 and 2022.
Higgins is coming off a 2024 season in which he ranked second on the team in catches (73) and receiving yards (911) and tied for sixth in the NFL with a career-high 10 receiving touchdowns.
Injuries have been the biggest concern with Higgins, though. The past two years he has missed five games with soft tissue injuries, and he has never started more than 14 games. Higgins had a strong training camp last August only to tweak his hamstring ahead of the season opener, causing him to miss the first two games. He then missed three games midseason because of a quad injury.
Still, Burrow has been adamant he wants Higgins in his arsenal of weapons moving forward and said last season he would be disappointed in the front office if the Bengals let another good player like Higgins leave.
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