2010 RULES: Franchise Extensions

[Goodell]

We currently allow teams to do contract extensions for franchise tagged players who don't get a bid on the market to match. The choices have been:

- 1-year, top 5 salary, no signing bonus.

- 3-year, top 5 salary, signing bonus = 50% annual salary (spread over the 3 years for cap purposes).

- 5-year, top 5 salary, signing bonus = 100% annual salary (spread over the 5 years for cap purposes).

So a $10M salary according to the franchise tag numbers would be a 5M SB for 3 year extension (1.6M/yr in SB) or a 10M SB (as well as 10M salary) for 5 years (2M per year SB).

The 3-year option has been the popular way to go there because SB cap hit not as high if you want to move or cut later. This just looks at whether or not we want to revise those franchise extension options.

The way the polling is going, probably also going to add exclusive franchise tag also that would be at a higher cost (probably) than the non-exclusive franchise tag where the player would be able to field bids. In those cases for exclusive franchise tagged players, they would have to wait to see if no bids but would be able to be extended also (support for that in the other poll currently), and we'll take another look at the details of that too.

For now, dealing mostly with the types of franchise tagged players we've had in the past who don't get any offers and their teams have the option of extending those. And if we keep those options the same or not.

There is also room for discussion on other options or suggestions. I've wanted to preserve the published NFL salaries for these in part because it makes it easier and it's real info we can use with appropriate salaries as deemed by league calculations, but also wanting to keep elite players with high annual salaries (instead of shifting more away from salary to guaranteed bonuses) to maintain their value against a cap if they are moved from team to team where SB no longer part of that for acquiring team.


While I think the league should move toward less players being tagged and having more faith that the UFA advantages are enough if they want a good shot at retaining a player -- and raising the SB for extensions could help with that, we also don't want to make those extensions too high or unrealistic given the already top 5 salary associated.

We may also see fewer franchise tagged players even make it to that extension stage any more if teams use a compensation adjustment and alert the league that their guy who was tagged for two first rounders could be signed for less later in free agency.