Well, first thing to remember is that all this is coming from Tee’s camp, so of course they are as pure as the driven snow, never made any outrageous demands, etc. Also this report refers to the original conversations, which would have been in 2023.
That said it just confirms for me that the Bengals never had any intention of resigning Higgins and that “tag and release” was always the plan. No surprise there, we’ve seen it multiple times before.