05-24-2024, 01:16 PM
(05-23-2024, 04:27 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: I don't think we have ever done it, but I also think most people we tagged had pretty mediocre/bad years under the tag.
Michael Johnnson: 3.5 sacks
AJ Green: 523 yards
Jessie Bates: Wasn't anywhere near 2020 regular season or 2021 playoff Jessie Bates
Mike Nugent: 82.6% and got hurt
Shayne Graham: 82.1% and 0/2 in the playoffs
Stacy Andrews: tore his ACL during season
Justin Smith: 2.0 sacks
If Tee had the best year of his career, he would be the first player we had playing under the franchise tag who could say such a thing.
I am almost certain he wouldn't be happy about it, but apparently the Bengals don't care because he clearly wasn't going to be happy about it this time either. The Bengals FO dances to their own beat when it comes to mindset. For better or generally worse.
Remember that since Pittman and Ridley we then saw St Brown get a hair over $30m/yr, AJ Brown get $32m/yr... hell, we saw Jeudy get $17.5m/yr... and we still have Jefferson, Chase, Lamb, and Waddle on deck and next offseason there'll be Olave and Wilson available for extensions. Real good chance that the type of money Pittman got is only ~15th highest paid next offseason. So yeah, avoid injuries and just a solid season probably gets him >$23m/yr because the WR market is absurd right now and I can only imagine what it's like when there's 3 more $30m+/yr WRs on top of the 3 there currently is. At 6 it will become a whole new level of pay and it'll start bumping up all those lower guys.
Great post TLL, just reaffirms why most of us never like the Franchise Tag, never works out for us it seems.
I don't have a lot of faith in Tee staying healthy either, hamstring injuries tend to linger. But have to hope he does and has his best year
for him to get paid what he wants. Probably won't be us long term as we have to pay Chase long term and we have weapons and need
to keep the trenches strong.
