The Franchise Tag Will Get You
I don’t get it. Every team should have been taking furious notes over the 3 years where the franchise tag was in play for Kirk Cousins and the Washington Football Team. NFL players, historically, have not liked the Franchise Tag. In a sport with a staggering injury and attrition rate, a 1 year deal, despite the high dollars associated with it, was not desirable. Cousins and his agent demonstrated to all players how the tag can be used as a tool to leverage teams into unthinkable amounts of money and salary cap implications.
One cannot examine the mega deal that Dak Prescott signed without thinking of the saga with Cousins and Washington from 2015–2017. Washington franchised Cousins twice, paying him north of $43 million over 2 years and having every dollar count against their salary cap. Then, at the end of that term, the let him walk away, receiving only a compensatory pick for all the money and years they spent on a guy they did not seem to want. This is not to re-legislate the endless debate among Washington fans over whether they should have wanted him long term or not. The point is, as I argued then, the most inexcusable aspect of the entire saga was that Washington was left with nothing at the QB spot when the saga was over. In fact, here is what their balance sheet looked like at the QB spot:
-$43 million paid to Cousins (every $ counting against the cap)
-In order to acquire his replacement, a 3rd round pick and young & promising CB Kendall Fuller
-Then Alex Smith is signed to a deal that guarantees him $71 million ($94 million overall) and after his release last week, he will still count nearly $9 million against the team’s cap.
So, in total, $124 million, a 3rd round pick and a starting defensive player with no QB currently on the roster because the team did not want to pay their QB for the long term. Seems pretty silly doesn’t it? And to reiterate the point, it is NOT crazy to not want to sign Cousins to that kind of contract long term. I did not. What is crazy is to spend this kind of money and resources and end up with nothing but a compensatory pick 2 years after he was gone.
Smart teams rightfully looked at that disastrous bungling and realized that this was a course of action to be avoided. Players and agents have learned to call the bluffs of teams who threaten the use of the franchise tag and have smartly used it as the floor for negotiations. Say for the sake of argument that a team is offering $10 million a year for 5 years (NFL deals are always more complicated than this but bear with me). But, the franchise tag would be worth $13 million at the position the player plays. Any agent worth his salt will now say, ‘anything you offer us has to include that $13 million somewhere. Otherwise, my guy will just play on the tag’. Now, if the team does tag the player, and the player makes it through the season (or not in Dak’s case!), the new floor for a long term deal is 120% of the previous tag. It is a losing proposition for teams. For players, the risk of playing on a short term deal leads to incredible rewards.
Washington and Dallas have entered the chat.
The Cowboys, who are loathsome and adored by buffoons, applied the franchise tag to Dak Prescott in 2020. He got hurt. Dak Prescott just got $126 million guaranteed over 4 years. The Cowboys, representative of the worst things about America, will likely have paid Prescott $191 million dollars over 5 years ($160 million of 4 year deal which he’s likely to see + $31 million of franchise tag) by the time his contract ends. They wanted to save money by signing him to a longer term deal before they placed the tag on him in 2020. They did not save money. Not only did they pay Prescott top 5 money in 2020, he got hurt in week 5, but they had to give him the 2nd largest contract in league history behind superstar Pat Mahomes.
Washington, in 2021will be paying their star guard, Brandon Scherff, $4 million more than what any other guard makes. If this were a QB at the top of his profession and the difference was paying $35 million vs $31 million, no one would bat an eye. No guard, other than Brandon Scherff last year, has made over $15 million per season. Scherff will receive his 2nd franchise tag and earn over $18 million in 2021. That gap of nearly 130% over his guard peers has teams slapping their foreheads in befuddlement and frustration. Now, Washington retains a really good player on a 1 year deal. What’s the end game here? If the design is to sign him to a long term deal, this 2nd tag is really damaging to that mission. $33 million over 2 years already has reset the guard market. What might a longer term deal look like? If the design was something short term because the team did not believe in the player’s long term ability to produce at a high level, the WFT will end up paying a huge premium for a de facto insurance policy against Scherff not being able to live up to the last year or 2 of a long term deal they should have signed him to before 2020. It’s an expensive way to do business.
The franchise tag does make sense for some teams though. When the tag cost is not outrageously high for a position (safety for example) or a team is great & wants to keep the group together (Tampa Bay). Even with those examples, the franchise tag and its usage has evolved. This is now the dad on the road trip threatening to turn the car right around and the kids saying, ‘OK’.
