It took until July 25 for Texas A&M’s Shemar Stewart to finally put pen to paper on his fully guaranteed, four-year, $18.97 million deal with the Cincinnati Bengals. But the road there was anything but smooth. What followed his draft night excitement was a drawn-out contract standoff that lingered through the offseason and spilled into training camp. The tension grew as the first-round edge rusher missed the team’s first three practices.

However, once the official signing was done, both sides put those times behind them. And so did Stewart’s agent, Zac Hiller, who is the founder of Loyalty Above All Sports Entertainment. In an exclusive interview with EssentiallySports, he opined that delays are part of the process. “Yeah, I mean that it’s not necessarily that, it wasn’t necessarily a holdout,” he told our host, Andrew Whitelaw.

“So he wasn’t employed by the Bengals. He got drafted by them. And there were some contractual details that we felt weren’t necessarily in his best interest to just agree to.

“And like anything, it’s a negotiation. So you know, sometimes in negotiations, you give and you take.

“So, it takes the meeting of the minds, and it just took longer than usual for a meeting of the minds to happen,” he said in the exclusive interview with EssentiallySports.

Both sides were at a stalemate over contract language that could lead to potentially void future guarantees in case there were any off-field incidents or conduct detrimental to the Bengals. In fact, the team owner, Mike Brown, didn’t mince words in July while explaining the language of the contract. “If he’s sitting in jail, I don’t think I oughta be paying him,” Brown opined.

That kind of language in contracts is not rare. However, it was the first time that the Bengals used it with a first-round pick. Though Stewart and Hiller eventually agreed to that provision, they successfully negotiated to receive more of Stewart’s signing bonus earlier rather than later in the season.

No real lessons? Zac Hiller on the lengthy negotiation

When our host, Andrew Whitelaw, asked this question, Hiller’s response was quite pragmatic. “No real lessons,” he added in the EssentiallySports exclusive interview. “I think it’s just like anything else. It takes some time to have a meeting of the minds.

“Even when you think that a contract negotiation is just so simple, and you know, the numbers are slotted, there are still little details that you have to pay attention to. And it just takes some time for a meeting of the minds to happen. But you stay true to your position, and hopefully you come to an agreement, and normally, it works out.”

In the end, the two sides compromised to finalize the deal. That being said, Stewart was not the only player who delayed signing his rookie contract. Back in 2018, linebacker Roquan Smith missed out on several training sessions with the Chicago Bears because of a similar issue.