Ask Jim Owczarski

[jowczarski]

Yeah you can only apply one tag per year, so just one franchise OR transition. If it were me, I'd offer Atkins a fair deal (which they will) and if he doesn't take it - franchise him in 2019. They've done that before with who they feel are premier pass rushers (Smith, Johnson). Atkins will be 31 in 2019, in year 10. Wouldn't oppose it. It would be a big number. And Cousins has changed the market on that - basically now players like that try to bake in the franchise numbers into the guaranteed money they are looking for from teams. So if the Bengals didn't want to hit those numbers to begin with, they may not want to.