Eric Berry and the Chiefs are back to square one with the franchise tag, according to various local and national news reports. Which makes this as good a time as any to remind everybody of how much the franchise tag should be abolished.
This labor agreement still has three years to run (it’s a 10-year deal, signed in 2011 and due to expire in 2020), but it’s never too early for players and the union to lock these feelings away, don't let them trickle away in the flood of other day-to-day football issues — and push to ditch a system that, by and large, they can’t stand.
Berry sure doesn’t like it. If the football gods allow it, he could still be around three years from now, and he’ll be able to relay his tale of hating the tag. Here in 2017, he’s in line to get tagged for the second straight offseason, meaning the Chiefs are far less likely to sign him to a long-term deal.
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They both want one, of course. The Chiefs are still fine with him not having one, though — and with the fact that they don’t really have to negotiate one until they’re good and ready, thanks to the tag.
Everybody who lines up this time of year and lectures the players about not being grateful for the fat one-year salary they’re guaranteed through the tag just doesn't get it. No matter how many times that notion is debunked by the players themselves, collectively and individually, the public remains willfully clueless about what the players clearly prefer.
Security and leverage. The less they have of the latter, the less they’ll have of the former. And the NFL being what it is, they don’t have all that much of the former in the first place.
Thus, Berry could, in the narrowest, most short-sighted of senses, be content with the expected tag for safeties this season. Depending on the source (because the actual numbers won’t be determined until this week), he’s due to make between $11 million and $13 million, a raise over the $10.8 million he made last year when the Chiefs tagged him the first time.
Things went poorly with that, to put it mildly. Hey, if they hadn’t, the Chiefs would be dealing with someone else’s long-term negotiations, instead of with their single best defensive player and, if not the very best in the league at his position, one of the top three.
By rule, a player can be tagged three straight times. No team has been crazy enough to try it. There’s no reason to think it will happen with Berry. But that’s always hanging out there, right over the head of a key player in the middle of his prime reaching a career crossroads.
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Yes, Kirk Cousins, that alert notice is flashing for you. Berry and Cousins are both 28. Cousins is going into his sixth season, Berry his eighth. This is their window, yet they're handcuffed to this process.
This whole drama gets played out at differing locations around the league every offseason. It will still be dragging out someone’s contract talks in 2020, when a new CBA is hammered out. Who knows where Berry or Cousins or any of the stars-in-waiting will be by then? But if they aren’t around, a bunch of other players will be.
If they remember the feeling Berry has now, the franchise tag system could end up on life support — and every player will celebrate.