While little was made of it at the time, the change in calculating procedures for franchise tags could have major implications on several negotiations this offseason, including those with Saints quarterback Drew Brees and Bears running back Matt Forte. The current collective bargaining agreement between the league and the NFL Players Association includes a new formula for the franchise tag, and league sources have said franchise tags will be considerably lower this season as part of the new CBA. League sources have provided figures that will be extremely close to what those salary totals look like, by position, when teams being placing those tags on players in February. In the past a franchise tag was derived from averaging the top 5 salaries at a particular position from the previous season. The new formula is much more complicated and is formed by determining the franchise tags at that position over the last five years as a percentage of the overall cap figure in each of those five years. Source: NFL.com
That could be trouble for a lot of teams. Kinda makes you think about Chris Johnson, his cap hit and his production...
