Just a day before the deadline passed on Tuesday, the Cincinnati Bengals opted to place the franchise tag on wide receiver Tee Higgins for a second-straight year.
It was a move that caused immediate reactions not just by fans and media, but by players themselves, too.
The Higgins news now takes the number one overall free agent wide receiver off the open market. While a potential tag-and-trade situation is still a possibility, right now, Higgins is slated to stay in Cincinnati at least one more year.
What does this mean? In simple terms, as Sports Illustrated's Albert Breer pointed out, it means the Bengals just made things even more difficult on themselves. The tag for Higgins, this year, is just over $26 million.
The Bengals have a difficult road ahead on working out a long-term Tee Higgins contract
Breer noted how the Bengals typically don't guarantee big money, beyond the first year of a deal, for any position other than quarterback. That's just now how they operate.
Now, Cincinnati is going to be forced to either offer Higgins a front-loaded deal with more than $26 million guaranteed in Year 1 or completely revert from how they've done things as a franchise and thus guarantee more money for Higgins over multiple years.
This is all even disregarding the situation with fellow wide receiver Ja'Marr Chase, who you better believe is going to get far more money than Higgins. Chase will reportedly reset the non-quarterback market with his upcoming contract.
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Yet, the team still wants to work out a long-term contract with Higgins in addition to Chase. Of course, the Chase situation is also one that has its own worries, at the moment. But that's a different story altogether. Assuming the Bengals want to get a deal done with Chase, Higgins and also Trey Hendrickson, that's a hefty to-do list going forward.
How on earth are the Bengals planning to get all of this done?
Like Breer pointed out, this complicates things drastically.
Cincinnati seems to be listening to quarterback Joe Burrow over the past several weeks, with their star quarterback not being shy about his desire for the team to get "everybody paid" this offseason. The franchise tag is a start for a Higgins deal, but there is a long road ahead for his long-term future to be secured in Cincinnati.