Though no team has used it yet, the franchise tag window opened a week ago and extends through March 9. Generally, there’s a flurry of tagging activity as the deadline nears.
The Pittsburgh Steelers tagged outside linebacker Bud Dupree on deadline day in 2020 in hopes of working out a long-term deal. As we know, that didn’t happen, and, in all likelihood, Dupree with be with a different team in 2021.
Franchise tag figures for each position are based on the 2021 salary cap, and that final number is still unknown. Teams are told it won’t dip below $180 million — a far cry from the $198.2 cap in 2020 — so they’re really just guesstimating at this point, which may be why some teams are hesitant to use the tag.
Per OverTheCap, it’s projected that the linebacker value will be $15.65 million and wide receiver value, $16.43 million. If Pittsburgh tags Dupree for a second consecutive season, his figure will be considerably higher than the projected one-year tender.
Clubs must pay 120 percent of the player’s previous salary to tag a player for two consecutive years. Based on his 2020 $15.8 million salary, Dupree would be paid to the tune of $18.96 million for one season.
Many clubs, including the Steelers, are in the red. They’ll be scrambling until the final hour to get cap-compliant by the March 17 start of the new league year. This isn’t to say that general manager Kevin Colbert and his staff were all willy-nilly handing out money left and right. Good teams will always be up against it because they pay top talent their worth and often try to retain them. No one could’ve predicted a global pandemic would send the cap spiraling.
So, of Pittsburgh’s 25 pending free agents, who is most likely to be given the franchise tag designation? There’s no question that Dupree and wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster are top-priority free agents that the Steelers would keep if they could.
If they could are the keywords here — because it appears they can’t. “I would say it’s doubtful that we will be able to use a tag,” Colbert said in a recent call with Pittsburgh media.
“Again, when we say we don’t know what the cap is, what we try to do is prepare for the worst situation. Right now, we know the cap can’t go below $175 million based on the CBA. So, we will always work in that mindset. We will play different scenarios and put together different scenarios in the event that is what we are dealing with.”
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