5 current Bengals with the best Hall of Fame chances
Trey Hendrickson is still underrated by the NFL media, and might even be underappreciated in Cincinnati. The fireworks show that was the Bengals offense distracted from “Blackout Trey’s” absolute annihilation of pass protection.
Hendrickson has made himself a grand master of pass-rushing, and his sack numbers repeating from New Orleans only indicate a baseline for a 27-year-old player. There is room to grow for Hendrickson.
Here’s him fooling star rookie Rashawn Slater.
Trey Hendrickson takes 2 steps to sell the inside rush which shortens the corner. He then chops down Slater's outside arm to win around the outside. Finally, he rips to disengage and gets a clean sack on Justin Herbert. Awesome pass rush. pic.twitter.com/h61et3fw7E
— Mike (@bengals_sans) December 7, 2021
The lowest sack total of any Hall of Fame pass rusher is the 82.0 career sacks by the Chicago Bears Dan Hampton. Hampton was a member of the famed ’85 squad, and carried his impact on that team into Canton.
Hendrickson could get to 100 career sacks and cement his hall of fame spot that way. He’s at 34.0 sacks right now. That’s only five more years of 13.5 sacks per season for Hendrickson to reach 100. But his best path to enshrinement is through his playoff success.
Highest @PFF Pass Rush grades in the playoffs
— Steve Palazzolo (@PFF_Steve) January 31, 2022
Von Miller 90.5
Trey Hendrickson 87.5
Aaron Donald 87.0
Hendrickson logged 3.5 sacks in the playoff run, bringing his career total in the postseason to 4.5 sacks. This isn’t too far from the all-time greats, Michael Strahan had 9.5 playoff sacks, Reggie White had 12.5, and Dan Hampton had 8.0.
If the Bengals are making deep playoff runs the opportunity will be plenty for Hendrickson to catch these three and make his case.