Nick Piccone
Much of the discussion thus far in the Eagles’ offseason has been whether or not the team will utilize their franchise tag on anyone – but most notably Sam Bradford. The Eagles would pretty much be left without a quarterback except Mark Sanchez, and that’s certainly not an envious position to be in.
I’ve been off and on the Bradford bandwagon – I don’t think he’s the long-term answer at quarterback soley due to his injury history, but I also don’t think the Eagles are in dire straits and need to completely rebuild. I honestly don’t care either way what they do as long as there’s a vision. That’s what Chip Kelly’s teams lacked – it was plug and play for three years.
According to the Daily News’ Les Bowen, the Birds aren’t expected to tag Bradford. In fact, they’re not expected to use it at all. The money they have to play around with isn’t going to Sammy, seemingly.
The Birds aren’t expected to use the 2016 tag, today or at all before the March 1 deadline, to ensure the retention of their most prominent free agent, quarterback Sam Bradford. They still might sign Bradford, but they don’t seem wed to him to the extent that they’re willing to dedicate $20 million or so of their 2016 salary cap to the notion.
They also aren’t expected to employ the less-utilized transition tag.
We don’t know how Bradford feels about the tag, but given that playoff teams such as Houston and Denver might be interested in his long-term services when free agency opens March 9, we might infer he is happy he is probably going to avoid it.
I agree with Les here. Bradford not being tagged opens up the opportunity for him to negotiate on the free market and possibly get an even bigger payday than he would’ve gotten if the Eagles placed the tag on him. I highly doubt that’s going to happen, but we never really know until it’s done.
If you want to read more of Bowen’s history of the tag, click here.