Will Eagles Use Franchise Tag for Chauncey Gardner-Johnson?
Call it a hunch, but there won’t be a franchise tag for safety Chauncey Gardner-Johnson.
The Eagles have until 4 p.m. Tuesday afternoon to apply the tag, but the thinking here is they just won’t.
There are more hyped situations where it will be interesting to see if the tag is applied, such as in New York, where the Eagles’ NFC East rival Giants, who lost all three games to Philly last season, are trying to figure out a way to keep both QB Daniel Jones and RB Saquon Barkley, but can only use the tag once.
Three tags were handed out on Monday, with the Cowboys applying it to RB Tony Pollard, the Jaguars to TE Evan Engram, and the Raiders to RB Josh Jacobs.
Gardner-Johnson’s case is just as important for GM Howie Roseman, who traded a pair of late-round draft picks last August to land CGJ, but it’s unlikely the Eagles will do that with Gardner-Johnson.
That would put them on the hook for $14 million, which is slightly more than they have to spend to stay under the salary cap. Now, the two parties could work out a deal that would spread the money out over the life of a contract in the, say, four-year range, but it just isn’t the way the Eagles operate.
While it would buy them more time to come to terms on a new contract, the Eagles have used it just five times since the franchise tag came into existence in 1993, and twice they rescinded it.
It’s a business model that works.
They have been to a pair of Super Bowls in five years and won a pair of NFC championships in that time. They know how to conduct business, and tagging players usually generates animosity with a player.
On the other hand, look at the Cowboys, who used the tag in each of the last six years, yet haven’t won anything of consequence in that stretch. It’s not a fruitful way to do business, yet Jerry Jones and his son, Stephen Jones, for some reason, have yet to realize this.
There’s also another reason the Eagles may draw a financial line with CJG and see if he accepts. It’s actually two reasons – the development of undrafted free agent Reed Blankenship and the reliability of Marcus Epps.
Epps will come much more cheaply than Gardner-Johnson, and maybe the Eagles will go a little more cheaply at that spot.
Ed Kracz is the publisher of SI.com’s Fan Nation Eagles Today and co-host of the Eagles Unfiltered Podcast. Check out the latest Eagles news at www.SI.com/NFL/Eagles or www.eaglestoday.com and please follow him on Twitter: @kracze.
