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The deadline for signing players with multi-year franchise tags has passed. What happens next?
For the two tagged players who have accepted their offers (Dolphins tight end Mike Gesicki and Cowboys tight end Dalton Schultz), they will continue into 2022 with guaranteed salaries of $10.9 million. Next year, her teams will have to decide whether to tag her again with a 20 percent increase over her 2022 salary (i.e., $13.08 million) or let her go through free agency. After the end of the regular season, they can be re-signed for multi-year contracts.
By 2024, when the third franchise tag becomes essentially quarterback money, they’ll be gone.
As for the two flagged players who remain unsigned (Chiefs tackle Orlando Brown and Bengals safety Jessie Bates), neither of them are signed to their teams. You can skip training camp and the entire preseason with no financial penalty. They can appear just before the start of the regular season and receive their full salary.
They can also hold out in the regular season if they’re willing to sacrifice their game checks. There will be a deadline for the offer to be accepted and credited for the current tag year (we’ll hear the details again if/when they don’t come out in the first week).
The Bengals and/or Chiefs may also sign a one-year contract with either player with terms other than the amount of their bid. More money can be offered. A promise can be made not to tag the player in 2023. The only limitation is the length of the contract. It can’t last more than a year.
Although the franchise tag continues to be a means of keeping otherwise unrestricted free agents out of the open market, players still have rights under the system. They can go from year to year for two years and then most likely become unrestricted free agents. (As explained in Playmakers, Kirk Cousins and Trumaine Johnson proved that point in 2018.)
With Bates, it can take as little as a year. The Bengals typically let franchise-tagged players go under tag after a single season.
Still, the risk of injury for non-quarterbacks is real. Although the franchise tag pays a good salary for a season, it doesn’t come with the long-term security that a market value deal offers, with at least two years of fully guaranteed salary — or more.
All four franchise players are likely to play for their teams in 2022. The question is will they be there in 2023? And if not, will they get such a contract on the open market next year as they would have gotten this year.