The franchise tagging deadline has passed and there are officially only two players who won’t hit the open market.
Just Bengals receiver Tee Higgins and Chiefs guard Trey Smith were tagged in 2025.
Cincinnati and Kansas City have both indicated that the respective clubs are interested in retaining Higgins and Smith on a long-term deal.
The franchises have until July 15 at 4 p.m. ET to work out a long-term contract. Otherwise, the players will once again be slated to hit unrestricted free agency in March 2026.
Higgins and Smith were No. 1 and No. 3, respectively, on PFT’s list of top 100 free agents this offseason.
Higgins, who was also franchise tagged in 2024, is slated to make $26.2 million on the franchise tender in 2025.
Smith will earn $23.4 million on the franchise tender in 2025.
A second-round pick in 2020, Higgins caught 73 passes for 911 yards with a career-high 10 touchdowns in 12 games last season.
The Chiefs selected Smith in the sixth round of the 2021 draft. He’s started 67 out of a possible 68 regular-season games since entering the league, becoming a first-time Pro Bowler in 2024.
The Bengals have tagged receiver Tee Higgins for the second straight year. The next question is whether they’ll make good on their stated intention to turn the tag into a long-term deal.
The thing about intentions is that they can, and often do, change. If someone makes the Bengals a suitable offer, will they decide to trade him?
It happens. Last year, the Chiefs tagged and traded cornerback L’Jarius Snead.
Trading Higgins would free up $26.16 million in cap space and, perhaps more importantly for the Bengals, in cold, hard cash. With receiver Ja’Marr Chase surely looking for a long-term deal with a new-money average at or in excess of $40 million per year, they need that money to keep the guy who won the receiving triple crown in 2025.
The Bengals rarely turn a franchise tag into an extension. (In the attached video, I said they’ve only ever done it with receiver Carl Pickens, who was cut after the first year of the deal. I was wr-wr-wr-mistaken. They extended running back Rudi Johnson after tagging him in 2005.) And, as explained in the video and earlier, the fact that Higgins can make $26.16 million in 2025 and then become a free agent makes it even more expensive to get him to trade in the bird in the hand.
While it’s legitimate and permissible to trade a tagged player, there’s a separate problem. Quarterback Joe Burrow expects the Bengals to find a way to keep Chase and Higgins and defensive end Trey Hendrickson. If they trade Higgins, they’ll have some explaining to do to their most important player.
The Bengals have their hands full, trying to get receivers Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins and edge rusher Trey Hendrickson signed to long-term extensions. They used the franchise tag on Higgins on Monday, giving them more time to either trade him or sign him to a long-term agreement.
That means some of their other players will hit the free agent market next week.
Cornerback Mike Hilton appears to be one of those.
Hilton tweeted, “New opportunities always present themselves,” with a prayerful hands emoji.
Hilton, 30, is 46th on PFT’s top-100 list.
He joined the Bengals in 2021 as an unrestricted free agent, signing a four-year, $24 million deal after four years in Pittsburgh.
In 64 games with the Bengals, including 36 starts, Hilton totaled 283 tackles, two sacks, 36 tackles for loss, one fumble recovery and six interceptions.
Last week, Bengals director of player personnel Duke Tobin said the team hopes to sign receiver Tee Higgins to a long-term deal. Later that day, Higgins tweeted the “cap” emoji, which means he was saying someone was lying, about something.
Now that the Bengals have officially placed the franchise tag — again — on Higgins, they’ve added in their official announcement that they make the move “with the intent of continuing to work toward a long-term deal in Cincinnati.”
We’ll be watching for another cap emoji from Higgins.
If the Bengals truly intend to sign Higgins to a long-term deal, they have until July 15 to do it. After that, Higgins will remain eligible for a one-year, $26.16 million contract for 2025.
Higgins could also be traded to a new team. If he isn’t traded and doesn’t sign a long-term deal, a third tag in 2026 would require the Bengals to offer the average of the five highest quarterback cap numbers for 2025. Which means he will not be tagged a third time.
The fact that Higgins has a clear path to free agency after one more year makes it harder to parlay the 2025 tag into a long-term deal. He’ll be trading in the ability to make $26.16 million and become a free agent for whatever the Bengals offer on a multi-year contract. What will it take to get him to do that?
Yes, he’d be carrying the injury risk beyond 2025 if he takes the tag and waits to become a free agent next March. Regardless, he has a pretty big bird in the hand. The Bengals will need to offer something big enough to get him to let it fly away.
Word last month was that the Bengals would use the franchise tag on wide receiver Tee Higgins if they weren’t able to sign him to a long-term deal ahead of Tuesday’s tag deadline and that’s proven to be correct.
Higgins confirmed on Monday that the Bengals have used the tag on him for the second straight season. The tag carries a salary of $26.16 million because of the 20 percent raise mandated for a second tag.
Chiefs guard Trey Smith is the only other player to receive a franchise tag at this point.
The Bengals have said that they want to sign Higgins to a longer deal, but Higgins doesn’t appear to believe that the team is working as hard as it could to make that happen. They also have wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase and defensive end Trey Hendrickson up for contract extensions this offseason and keeping everyone may prove to be too much for the Bengals to pull off.
Higgins had 73 catches for 911 yards and 10 touchdowns during the 2024 season.
