In Week 5 of the 2020 NFL Season, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott suffered a season ending injury against the New York Giants. Prescott suffered a compound right ankle fracture and dislocation. In the offseason, Prescott was “franchise- tagged”, preventing him from negotiating with other teams in free agency. Coming off of 4,902 passing yards in 2019, the market for Dak Prescott was expected to be large. Because he was tagged, Prescott signed the tag, making his salary a guaranteed $31 million dollars for the 2020 season.
Through five games, the Cowboys QB threw for 1,856 yards, which was an average of 371.2 yards per game. Prescott was on pace to break the NFL’s single season passing yardage record with 5,939 yards, with the record of 5,477 passing yards being held by Peyton Manning. Despite the success, the 27-year old is yet to receive a large contract extension. Since Prescott was under the franchise tag, his future looks unclear.
The franchise tag is something that each National Football League (NFL) team has every offseason. It is used on players that are free agents and gives their team the power to retain their rights without a long-term deal in place. Players are not forced to sign the tag, but if they don’t, they will still belong to the team and cannot become a free agent until the next season. A player can be tagged multiple years in a row, but the salary will continuously improve.
There are three different types of tags: exclusive, non-exclusive and transition.
The exclusive tag means that the player cannot negotiate with any other team, so they are locked in with their team. The non-exclusive tag allows the player to negotiate with other teams, but if that player signs with a new team, the former team gets two first round picks in return. In this scenario, a team has to be comfortable with giving up two first round picks for signing that player. With the exclusive and non-exclusive tags, the player is paid an average of the top five salaries at their position. Then, the transition tag allows players to freely negotiate with other teams, but the original team gets no compensation if the player signs with a new team. The transition tag pays the player an average of the top 10 salaries at their position.
Players don’t always sign the franchise tag. A case of a player refusing to play under the franchise tag is Le’Veon Bell in 2018. In 2017, Bell played under the franchise tag. Coming off of 1,946 total yards, he was hoping to get a long-term deal with the Steelers, but they elected to franchise tag him for the second season in a row. The 26-year-old running back had dealt with serious injuries before and wanted long-term stability. The Steelers’ offer to Bell wasn’t what he thought he was worth and he didn’t like the guarantees, so he refused to sign it and sat out the entire season in 2018.
Bell signed with the New York Jets in 2019 on a four-year $52.5 million contract with $27 million guaranteed. The 27-year-old was coming off of a year of sitting out due to refusing to play on the tag and the market for him wasn’t as large as he anticipated it to be. Due to franchise tag rules, he wasn’t able to negotiate a deal the prior year and lost a lot of money when he was sitting out, considering that he was offered a five-year, $70 million deal from the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Players who are tagged are forced to make a difficult decision. Is it worth it to risk their financial stability for one year or do they sign a long-term contract with their team without even getting to explore their market in free agency? A team may only be willing to pay their player a certain amount of money, but they can’t test their market if they get the exclusive tag. It becomes a difficult decision to make. What if they suffer a career altering injury while on that one-year franchise tag? It seems that these rules benefit the franchises much more than they benefit the players.
