[njcoltfan]

Originally Posted by Chaka

You are looking at this like its baseball-type free agency, but it isn't. The NFL system allows a team to use the franchise tag to keep one player a year. Those are the rules everyone agreed to. The downside for the team is that it is costly to do so - in Bell's case, because it was the second year in a row he was tagged, he was entitled to a 20% increase over his prior year's $12 million+ salary (or $14.5 million). What's more, this salary is fully guaranteed once the tag is signed. Because it's a one-year, fully guaranteed contract, the team can't do any of the financial engineering that it would otherwise be able to do with a longer contract containing up front bonuses and guarantee limits. So it's not a perfect solution for the team either.

As to your point that it was not intended to be used over multiple years, that is simply not correct. The NFL and the player's union anticipated this exact scenario, and agreed to allow the tag to be used repeatedly if a team desires to do so. The catch is that it will cost the team dearly to do so, because in the second tag year (like Bell this year), the team has to increase the player's salary by 20%. The third tag year is even more expensive, as the player gets another 44% salary bump.

Kirk Cousins is a great illustration of this, and how a player with enough guts can use this situation to their advantage. In the first year he was tagged (2016), he received the normal initial tag price - the average of the top five salaries at his position (something like $20 million for QBs). He signed the tag and played out the season. In 2017, he made aggressive contract demands and the Redskins tagged him again, but by doing so under the above rules they were forced to increase his salary by 20% to $24 million . Again, he refused to accept a contract offer he felt was too low, signed the tag and played out the year. The third year (this last offseason), he maintained his aggressive demands and put the Redskins in the unenviable position of either tagging him a third time at the astronomical cost of a fully guaranteed $34 million (a 44% increase over the prior year), or to finally wave the white flag and let him become a free agent. He became a free agent.

Bell was just one year from putting the Steelers in a similar financial predicament (though if my calculations are correct, Bell's tag price would have been $21 million this coming off season - still a massive guaranteed amount for a RB).

I don't want to sign him either, and I cannot feel sorry for a guy who would have made 14.5mil guaranteed but opted not to sign.