The franchise tag sucks.
It always has. It always will. But it will always be a part of the fabric of the NFL, unless and until the players strike over it. Which they won’t.
At one point, the NFL tried to create the impression that it’s an honor/privilege to be tagged. Fortunately, that nonsense never took root.
It’s not an honor or a privilege. It’s a bad thing. Yes, it entails good money. But it keeps the player from getting great money, at a time when he otherwise would have hit the open market. And it makes him wait a year, sometimes two, to get what he deserves. With no guarantee the window will be open in 12 or 24 months.
The league uses it to restrict player movement. It has been, since it arrived, the biggest caveat to free agency.
“Well, we have free agency, with one exception. Every team has the right every year to keep its best free agent from becoming a free agent. Otherwise, yeah, we have free agency.”
It suppresses the market at every position. A player who would otherwise become the next highest-paid player at his position doesn’t. And by not pushing the bar to a higher level, other players won’t have the risen tide lift their specific boats.
The tag traces to the 1993 Collective Bargaining Agreement. That deal emerged from the settlement of the antitrust lawsuit pursued by the players in the aftermath of the failed strike of 1987. Basically, the union shut down and then sued the league under the argument that 28 (at the time) individual businesses can’t make rules regarding player movement between teams.
The argument is stong. The players had the league on the run. Instead of crossing the finish line with arms raised, the players did a deal that included the franchise tag as a way to allow teams to keep their most valuable and coveted players on the team, year after year after year.
Did the players not realize the value of the tag to teams? They probably did, because the players who put their names on the lawsuit filed against the league (most notably, Reggie White) received a specific promise that they wouldn’t be subject to the franchise tag.
The players should have pushed for more. They should have held out for no franchise tag. It has given the NFL free agency with a giant asterisk. When every team can, any and every year, slam a door in the face of a player who otherwise would get a contract providing potentially generational wealth in exchange for the work, accomplishments, and sacrifices he has made, the NFL doesn’t really have free agency.
Again, it’s not coming back without a strike. Or without the union, after the expiration of a CBA, shutting down and filing another antitrust lawsuit — and refusing that time around to settle it for anything less than real free agency.
