How many NFL players can a team apply the franchise tag to?

In the high-stakes world of NFL roster management, teams often face tough decisions when it comes to retaining key players whose contracts have expired. One option at their disposal is the franchise tag, a mechanism designed to keep valuable assets in-house for at least one more season.

The franchise tag allows NFL teams to retain free agents by offering them a one-year contract worth the average of the top five salaries at their respective position or 120% of the player’s previous year’s salary, whichever is higher. This provision helps teams prevent their top talent from hitting the open market while buying time to negotiate a long-term deal.

The NFL Franchise Tag Single-Player Limitation

Despite the potential benefits of the franchise tag, teams must operate within the constraints of the NFL’s rules, which limit them to tagging just one player each offseason. This means that even if a team has multiple impending free agents they wish to retain, they can only use the franchise tag on one of them.

The franchise tag offers NFL teams a valuable tool for retaining top talent, its effectiveness is limited by the rule allowing only one player to be tagged per team each offseason. This limitation adds complexity to roster management decisions and negotiation dynamics, forcing teams to prioritize and strategize accordingly in their efforts to build competitive rosters for the upcoming season.