The franchise designation has evolved into a powerful management tool that restricts a team’s best free agent in a given year from entering the open market regardless of whether he is a true marquee player. It wasn’t meant to work this way. The franchise tag was originally intended to be a precursor for the indispensable signing long-term contracts.
Most players aren’t happy when given a franchise tag. The designation can hinder the ability to gain long-term security because players must incur the risk of serious injury and poor performance again after already playing out their contracts when an agreement on a long-term deal can’t be reached. In these cases, the franchise tag is essentially a high salaried one-year “prove it” deal.
The franchise tag has been used 24 times over the last three years (2021-2023). Less than half of the time (11 of 24 or 45.83%) during this time frame was a long-term deal signed while under the designation.
A look at how franchise tags work is below. The projected 2024 franchise numbers and an examination of the best candidates to receive the designations next year follows.
Franchise tag logistics
NFL teams can retain the rights to one of its impending free agents in 2024 with the use of a non-exclusive or exclusive franchise tag during a 15-day period from Feb. 20 to March 5.
How franchise tenders are calculated is misunderstood. Prior to the 2011 NFL collective bargaining agreement, non-exclusive franchise tags had been an average of the five-largest salaries in the prior year at a player’s position or 120% of the prior year’s salary of the player, whichever was greater. For franchise tag purposes, salary means a player’s salary cap number, excluding workout bonuses and most other performance bonuses.
The 120% and five-largest salaries provisions have remained intact, but the formula component is now calculated over a five-year period that’s tied to a…
Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/agents-take-2024-franchise-tag-projections-and-10-potential-candidates-who-could-get-designated/
Author : Joel Corry
Publish date : 2023-12-27 20:28:41
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