NFL may move back franchise tag deadline
The next major date on the NFL’s offseason calendar is right around the corner. The deadline to use the franchise tag coming up at 4 pm ET on March 9th. Any team that plans on using the tag to prevent one of its unrestricted free agents from entering the open market this year will have to apply it at that point.
A storyline to follow going forward: If the official salary cap number doesn’t come today and soon, NFL will have to move back the deadline to franchise tag players from Tuesday. It’s a situation several GMs are bracing for and would further stall business for a bit.
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) March 8, 2021
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However, the uncertainty surrounding the league’s salary cap may force that deadline to be pushed back. According to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, “several†general managers around the league are already are preparing for that move to take place should no cap numbers for the 2021 season be announced in the coming hours.
Such a move would not be unprecedented, though. Last offseason, the franchise tag window was extended right up until the start of the legal tampering period. This, in turn, created some late movement with free agency coming up.
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Back in 2020, the ongoing collective bargaining negotiations were the reason for the extension.
This year, the salary cap talks in light of the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic could mess up the original offseason schedule: the cap is expected to go down with Covid-19 severely impacting the NFL’s revenue numbers last year, but the NFL and NFLPA are still in the process of figuring out by how much the spending threshold will be moved.
