The Tennessee Titans are open for business. This year’s NFL free agency period will officially open at 3 p.m. CT on March 16, but the first major date on the league’s 2022 calendar has mercilessly arrived. Starting Tuesday, NFL teams can use the franchise tag to keep pending free agents from reaching the open market.
The franchise tag is essentially a fully guaranteed one-year contract teams are allowed to use to keep one of their unrestricted free agents from hitting the open market. Applying the tag buys a team more time to reach a long-term contract with the player in question.