How Bengals’ Tee Higgins endured — and emerged from — a tumultuous offseason

CINCINNATI — Tee Higgins casually slips the admission into conversations.

“I’m really introverted,” he says.

He doesn’t need to, though. Those who’ve known him since arriving in Cincinnati as the No. 33 pick in 2020 are well aware.

Despite attention-grabbing highlights, he’s rarely seeking attention.

The soft-spoken, reluctant star with the sheepish, shining smile might see his leaping, twisting, impossible contortion of a touchdown against Minnesota replay on repeat as the latest entry in a career of top-10 play candidates, but he’s always managed to stay a step ahead of the spotlight.

TEE HIGGINS JUMP BALL AND THE REACH! WHAT A TD 😱

📺: #MINvsCIN on @NFLNetwork 
📱: Stream on #NFLPlus pic.twitter.com/sLb6U64XNq

— NFL (@NFL) December 16, 2023

This past offseason, there was no avoiding it. Money and controversy attracted attention and Higgins was drowning in both.

Sitting on a stool in front of his locker last week, sweat still dripping down his forehead from his first practice back with the Bengals on the franchise tag, he understands that reality now.

That doesn’t mean he enjoyed it.

After an instant franchise tag, trade request, watching every other tagged player earn a long-term extension, leading national talk show segments, silence from the Bengals, news cycles about him making “business decisions” this season and a never-ending stream of headlines about his worth, Higgins wanted the spotlight turned off.

He wanted to be about football again.

At the first moment possible after OTAs in June, he signed the franchise tag applied to him 109 days prior. He eliminated any drama about extension deadlines, camp holdouts, hold-ins and questions about when he would report.

“I just wanted to kill all the noise,” Higgins said. “I was tired of everybody tweeting me and all the other bulls–t. I just wanted to kill all that and just lock in.”

The negativity and frustration beat him up one body blow at a time. And beat up those around him.

The NFL’s high stakes, bright lights and ruthless nature always leave a mark.

“I worry about his mental health,” said his mother, Camilla “Lady” Stewart.

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Trade requests in the summer in the NFL come and go like popup thunderstorms. They hit, they dissipate, and the news cycle moves on. Largely, they produce nothing.

For Higgins, a man thrust into the brutal business side of the NFL for the first time, the decision to ask for a trade out of Cincinnati was not a passing ploy for leverage.

He loves Cincinnati. He’s found unexpected comfort and connection with the city, its fans and his teammates. The small-town feel and big-city dreams meshed with his Tennessee roots.

So, to ask out after receiving the franchise tag of one year at $21.8 million and light the match of an NFL media firestorm, wasn’t merely for headlines and certainly not for attention.

“I asked for it,” he said. “I was serious.”

Higgins and his agent, David Mulugheta, of Athletes First, levied the request after an immediate tag and lacking negotiation toward a long-term agreement. Eight other NFL players were franchised in March. All eight eventually received long-term contracts. Higgins didn’t.

He can’t say for certain if the Bengals took his trade request seriously. The Bengals had just made quarterback Joe Burrow the highest-paid player in NFL history — and his top target Ja’Marr Chase is on deck. They needed to philosophically figure out how he could fit into their overall cash and cap pie.

“It just didn’t come together,” Bengals director of player personnel Duke Tobin said. “I don’t fault anybody on that. It’s gotta work for us and it has to work for them and sometimes that collides with each other and sometimes it misses. And we accept that and he accepts that.”

Knowing the team and city you’ve grown to love “missed” in assessing your value hit hard enough. Then, month after month, he watched one deal after another get done and receiver after receiver blow the top off the market, basking in their moment, smiling through their new-contract press conferences.

Nothing quite prepares you for that. He grew frustrated.

“That’s fair to say,” Higgins said. “It is my first time ever going through something like this, so I didn’t really know how to feel or how it was going to end.”

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The nature of how it was dragging out through the tag, free agency, draft and offseason program he opted not to attend kept his name in the headlines.

Higgins, 25, has two 1,000-yard seasons, and four playoff games posting at least 80 yards, including both AFC Championship appearances to bolster his 100 yards and two touchdowns in Super Bowl LVI. But suddenly, he had to hear about all he hadn’t done.

From his injury history to whether he’ll make in-season “business decisions” to playing with the benefit of Burrow and Chase, the ceiling and expectations for a player with one of the freakiest athletic skill sets in the NFL were in question.

In The Athletic Bengals fan survey, only 10 percent said the club should have paid him what he wanted and the percentage of fans calling him their favorite player (outside of Burrow) dropped from 10.5 percent in 2023 to 3.4 percent in 2024.

Everybody offered an opinion.

“Everybody, oh my gosh,” said Stewart, noted in the past for offering an unfiltered opinion or two of her own on social media. “It’s hard to keep my mouth shut. If you follow me on Twitter, you can imagine. I’m trying to cut back on that.”

They better let the sleeping DAWG lie I’ve been behaving 😂 @teehiggins5 😁

— TEEHIGGINSMOM #5 ✋🏽💫 (@adizlady) May 21, 2024

She calls herself a “mama bear,” so watching her son battle through this professional crossroads kept her defensive. She and other family members visited Higgins training and he returned home a couple of times. She would let him know she was praying for him and offer the unconditional support you’d expect from a mother.

Still, she won’t deny what she was constantly feeling.

“Anxiety,” she said.

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Zac Taylor didn’t want to overdo it. Players want their space and the Bengals head coach wanted to respect that as much as possible, specifically in a delicate situation like the one playing out with Higgins.

He says about once a month he would drop a line to Higgins. Whether relaying whatever news was happening at the time, a decision by the team or a necessary update but mostly just checking in on how he’s feeling.

“He always got back to me,” Taylor said.

The conversations weren’t typically long, but his willingness to have them was appreciated.

“I think that he really handled everything the right way,” Taylor said. “I’ve always said this: Tee’s personal and football character has always been what we dreamed of since we drafted him. This is the first kind of time in his life where he’s stuck in a professional situation where it can be managed a lot of different ways, and I thought he did a great job doing it.”

He checked in with teammates taking part in OTAs while he didn’t, they reported back on the rapid development of second-year backups Andrei Iosivas and Charlie Jones, taking full advantage of reps he vacated.

“That just made me smile,” Higgins said.

Receivers coach Troy Walters kept in regular contact, delivering some of those progress reports but also providing a sounding board. He heard a different version of Higgins than the one being portrayed publicly.

“You read a lot of things in the media about him being unhappy and this and that, but the whole time it’s a process,” Walters said. “He understood the things that can happen and had a great attitude the whole time. Never disgruntled.”

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Two years ago, Jessie Bates found himself in the same situation as Higgins. Drafted in the second round by the Bengals, Bates and his agent, Mulugheta, couldn’t reach a satisfactory agreement. He was forced to play out his fifth year on the tag before signing as a free agent in Atlanta where he made the Pro Bowl last year, inking for $64 million.

He was asked about Higgins’ situation in a media availability in Atlanta this past spring because, well, who wasn’t talking about him?

“I’ve been through that process, through the franchise tag, and I let it weigh on me a little bit more than I should have and I let it affect my play and how I was living my day-to-day life,” Bates said. “So, my thing for Tee is just, work on your craft, it don’t matter. If this is the contract year, I say it every time: Every year is a contract year. You should go out there and ball out and train like this is one of your last years to play.”

Higgins tried to avoid as much of the noise as possible at that point in the process, but Bates’ comments cut through.

“I definitely saw what he said and I took it to heart,” Higgins said. “Contract year, and I’ve got to play like it.”

He also watched Jonah Williams return to Cincinnati last year after a failed trade request to accept a move to right tackle after the signing of Orlando Brown Jr. The move ended up making Williams money in free agency, proving his versatility as he landed a two-year, $30 million contract in Arizona. Trey Hendrickson returned after a failed trade request in May, as well. He cited a desire to be there for his teammates for what drove him back to practice.

It’s turned into a fascinating annual ritual in Cincinnati of business battles producing happy campers.

“I think it speaks to how we’ve drafted and the types of people we’ve drafted,” Taylor said. “When you’re facing adversity, how you handle it. You handle it two different ways, and all those guys you just mentioned handled it the right way. But that matters.”

That personality trait carried through with Higgins, one mama bear saw even in his earliest days as a friend and teammate.

“Tee doesn’t like to let people down,” she said.

When the time came for Higgins to decide if he would sign the tag or push his report date up against the start of the season and, possibly beyond, he decided to pocket all the anxiety and opinions and keep all the critical decision-making conversation in one place.

“It’s really just me and my agent, at the end of the day,” Higgins said. “I’m not hearing what anybody else has to say. I’m hearing what he has to say because he has to give me the best advice. He’s my agent. That’s what he does and it’s what he does best. It’s just me and him and I’m not really worried about the outside noise.”

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Higgins might not have been worried about the outside noise, but he was exhausted by it. That’s why, as soon as mandatory minicamp ended, he signed the tag for $21.8 million this season and made clear his plan to show up full go at the start of training camp. For a kid who grew up dunking basketballs and scoring touchdowns on often shabby courts and fields in rural Tennessee, perspective wasn’t hard to find.

“I grew up with nothing at the end of the day — $21.8 (million), that’s life-changing money, you know what I’m saying?” Higgins said. “I wanted more and it didn’t happen. I made the decision: sign and be here with my guys.”

This wasn’t perfect nor what he wanted. Merely, an adjustment to make the best of his current situation and desire to be all about football again.

“I don’t have a choice but to be happy,” he said. “Me, personally, I don’t want no drama going on. I just want to be here with my guys … I’m pretty content with my decision.”

Nothing wrong with choosing happiness. Even if he really didn’t have a choice. If the Bengals were tagging him, he was playing here. He was never going to pass up the money.

“He’ll be fine,” Bates said. “He’ll get his payday.”

Returning to the football field meant returning to where he feels most at home. Now, with the assistance of a dramatically restructured diet, his sole focus is on staying healthy for a full season and winning a championship with the group of players he’s grown up with.

Yes, this probably will be his last ride in Cincinnati. He’s come to terms with that.

The new dream involves a go-route from the Super Bowl parade to free agency.

“If he goes out and does what he is supposed to do,” Walters said, “he will break the bank.”

Dealing with this for the first time — enduring the frustration, the criticism, the NFL Live segments, the backlash, the anxious family members and plotting a way to keep himself mentally happy and properly valued — did beat him up.

Months in this madness would drain anyone, much less an introverted 25-year-old facing professional controversy for the first time.

He leaned on his support system, his agent and relationships to stay in the right frame of mind: focusing on football and better understanding what really matters in his life. Now, a mother who is worried about her son’s mental health sees an alternate outcome emerging.

“It’s turning him into a better man,” she said. “He’s maturing a lot. He has to do it on his own as far as not being here at home. He’s learning to do it on his own and it’s shaping him into an incredible man.”

(Top photo: Emilee Chinn / Associated Press)