The Cincinnati Bengals have been in a precarious situation over the past week after arguably the league’s best number-two wide receiver demanded a trade.
Tee Higgins, the talented target man out of Clemson, made it known that he no longer wanted to play for Cincinnati after the team failed to put together a substantial push to sign the 6’4″ product to a contract extension.
On Friday night, Higgins made another big splash on social media when he posted photos of himself with the Tennessee sign on his social media.
As was the case with last week’s big Instagram snafu, Higgins took the post down almost instantaneously but some fans had already captured photos.
Higgins was born and raised in Oak Ridge, Tennessee before he left to play college at Clemson University and he would love to play for his local team.
The Titans would also love to bring in another talented wide receiver to make the progress of quarterback Will Levis into an NFL starter a little bit easier.
Unfortunately for Higgins, the activity of the Nashville team on Saturday afternoon may have completely blown that hope to smithereens.
Tennessee decided to trade for Kansas City Chiefs star cornerback L’Jarius Sneed for a third-round pick and the swapping of seventh-round picks. More significantly, this trade will also entail the $19.8 million franchise tag and inevitable contract extension that comes along with Sneed.
While a third-round pick may not seem like much, it almost guarantees that the team will not close a deal to bring Higgins back to his home state.
Higgins is anticipated to bring a second-round pick and new head coach Brian Callahan is unlikely to deal both second and third-round picks in his first season at the helm.
That would leave his entire draft class reliant exclusively on how well the first-round pick does which would put a tremendous amount of pressure on both the player and organization.
Callahan of course just took over in Tennessee after five seasons as offensive coordinator with Cincinnati.
While Cincinnati has fought tooth-and-nail to keep their star receiver in town, Higgins has started to become a public relations issue with his social media antics.
If Cincinnati can’t start to ease tensions between their star player and the front office, they should move Higgins sooner rather than later to put an end to his childish Instagram crusade.
