Multiple Bengals Stars Deemed Worthy of First-Round Picks in Trade-Value Exercise

ESPN's Bill Barnwell dropped a fun thought exercise this week when it comes to NFL trade value. He ran through the top stars on each team and noted how many draft picks it would take to pry them away.

Joe Burrow paced things with at least four first-round picks required to trade him. 

"Are there little holes that could be poked that might lead a team to place higher value on Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen (and potentially Lamar Jackson)? Sure. Burrow turns 29 this year, so he's actually a few months older than Allen, who arrived in the league two years earlier. Burrow has a major knee reconstruction in his past," Barnwell explained. "He takes a few too many sacks, even after adjusting for the offensive line struggles, and seems to have at least one ailment bothering him in training camp each year. He doesn't add much value as a runner in the way that most other elite quarterbacks do these days.

"All of that can be true and not matter much when it comes to valuing Burrow as a top-end quarterback. He's good enough that the Bengals can have any quarterback on the planet show up on the other sideline and still believe they have the best guy on the field, and that's a very small club."

Moving down the line, Ja'Marr Chase was the only Bengal deemed worthy of two first-round picks.

"Chase propelled the wide receiver market forward this offseason, jumping north of $40 million per season on his new deal," Barwell wrote. "I still think teams would line up to acquire him at that rate if the Bengals put him on the market. He won the receiving triple crown last season, combining astronomical volume with elite efficiency. He just turned 25 in March; he is only a few months older than Zay Flowers, who just finished his second NFL season. There might be a few teams that don't want to pay wide receivers this much money, but guys like Chase simply don't hit the open market."

A trio of names rounded out the group worth one first-round pick in Tee Higgins, Amarius Mims, and Shemar Stewart.

"If Higgins was going to hit the trade market this spring, there would have been teams willing to deal for him while projecting that he could hit new heights as the true No. 1 wideout, which he hasn't had the chance to be since Chase arrived in Cincinnati," Barwell wrote. "Instead, on a four-year, $115 million deal, Higgins isn't the same sort of bargain he was on his rookie deal, and there are teams that would be nervous about his run of ankle and hamstring issues over the past few years. At 26, there likely would be enough interest in him to justify a first-round pick as the return."

The honorable mentions included Trey Hendrickson and Chase Brown, two players who likely won't command a first-round pick. Hendrickson obviously isn't fetching that after going on the trade block this past spring with no first-round interest.