It’s franchise tag time again, and you’d be forgiven if you forgot about it. The Seattle Seahawks’ victory parade has barely coasted to a stop, and last year’s tag season was, well, forgettable. Just two players — Bengals receiver Tee Higgins and Chiefs’ guard Trey Smith — received the tag in 2025. Both emerged with long-term contracts, which is the ideal scenario for both player and team: The tag keeps a team’s top free agent from leaving, but the player is eventually rewarded with the long-term security that the tag does not bestow.
Alas, it doesn’t always work out that way. The tag can be used in preparation for a trade, or it can just be used to hold on to a player, even if there’s no chance a long-term deal will be hammered out anytime soon. And, of course, a player who receives a non-exclusive tag can sign with another team — if that team is willing to give up two first-round draft picks to the player’s original team, which is rarely the case. That’s why the franchise tag is an extremely powerful tool wielded by management to limit the open market. That, in turn, holds wages down.
The window for teams to apply the tag — they can use it once per year — opens on Tuesday and closes March 3. A reminder: If a player gets the tag, the team has until July 15 to get a longer-term deal done with the player. If there is no deal, the player plays under the one-year tag, which players generally hate because of the lack of long-term security against the risk of injury. Also available is the less frequently used transition tag, which simply gives the team that uses it the right of first refusal if another team makes an offer to the player who got the transition tag.
The final salary cap figure is still not known, but it’s going to be north of $300 million per team and perhaps closer to $305 million. It is, in other words, a very good time to be a premier free agent in the NFL.
Here are a few of the players who could be tagged in the coming weeks:
