Arizona Cardinals: No franchise tag

The Arizona Cardinals will not use the franchise tag for the fourth consecutive season

You have to go back to 2012 when the Arizona Cardinals stuck defensive end Calais Campbell with the franchise tag as the last time the team used it.  Since then it really hasn’t been much of a necessity honestly. General Manager Steve Keim put it best, “they can be outrageous”.  That was a comment reported by azcardinals.com from Keim’s interview on 98.7 Arizona Sports on Tuesday.

He’s right, the number is usually higher than what a team is willing to pay but do so anyway in order to keep their star.  Take Miami Dolphins defensive end Olivier Vernon for example.

On Tuesday the Dolphins placed the franchise tag on him.  He was going to be a hot commodity on the free agent market next week.  I’ve mentioned a couple of times the Cardinals should look at him.  So not only does Vernon likely get overpaid, he could end up quite overpaid by another team should they want to take that chance.

So, now you can count the Cardinals off the list of suitors for Vernon’s services.  The Cardinals have said time and again, they won’t overspend in free agency and will draw a line at some point.  This philosophy applies to other teams free agents as well as their own as you can see by avoiding placing a tag on anyone.

Certainly there are players the Cardinals do not want to lose in free agency.  However none of those players on the current roster are considered untouchable, otherwise the tag would have been placed.

At this point, I expect many of the Cardinals free agents to test the waters but I also expect some of them will go out there with higher expectations of what they feel they are worth.  Some will get their deal of a lifetime but others will get a harsh reality check and will come back to the Cardinals.