Starting today at 4:00 p.m. ET, the Cincinnati Bengals and every other NFL club can use the franchise tag (or transition tag) on any of their rostered players anytime in the next two weeks.

The expectation is that the Bengals do this with wide receiver Tee Higgins; the next chapter for one of Cincinnati's top players months after both parties couldn't agree on a long-term extension.

There should also be an expectation that the Bengals don't rush to place the tag on Higgins. A combination of history and reasoning supports this.

Bengals recent franchise tag history 

Higgins is set to become the third designated franchise player for Cincinnati in five years, joining A.J. Green (2020) and Jessie Bates III (2022). Both Green and Bates left the team the year after they were tagged, and both didn't receive the tag until right before free agency began.

Bates received the tag on the very last day of the 2022 deadline, and that wasn't by accident. 

Bates was tagged the day before the 2022 deadline. Green was also pretty late in the window. No reason to expect anything immediate with Higgins. https://t.co/DvIRjivrFl

— John Sheeran (@John__Sheeran) February 18, 2024

As most Bengals fans know, Bates and Higgins share David Mulugheta as an agent. Mulugheta has negotiated 56 current contracts according to his NFLPA profile and represents even more clients for Athletes First. He famously negotiated Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson's $230 million fully guaranteed contract back in 2022. Bates himself got $36 million guaranteed in his $64 million contract with the Atlanta Falcons in 2023. 

Loads of guaranteed money for non-Joe Burrow players and the Bengals do not go together. The club had obvious issues reaching a deal with Bates. The reason they took the full two weeks to tag him is because they leveraged the end of the window to potentially spur action. The only thing it spurred was the tag.

The Bengals watched Bates develop into a rising star from being drafted in the second round. They attempted to reach an extension leading up to the last year of his rookie contract in 2021, and when they couldn't land on an agreement before free agency the following year, they locked in one more year of his services with the tag.

All of that perfectly applies to Higgins. They'd love to keep him long-term and will attempt to do so in the next two weeks, even if the likelihood of that happening is minuscule. The only difference between Bates and Higgins is what might happen to the latter after the tag.

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Will the Bengals trade Tee Higgins?

Higgins' situation has spawned speculation of a tag-and-trade outcome, which was never really a thing with Bates. Opportunity cost plays a much larger role with the former.

Despite an underwhelming 2023 season filled with injuries, Higgins will still either command the projected $21 million it will cost to tag him, or a multi-year extension worth more on an annual basis. He's projected to be one of the more expensive free agents if he were to hit the open market. 

The Bengals have plenty of salary cap space to tag Higgins. They're also in need of multiple new starters that free agency can provide. Saving ~$20 million in cap space can go a long way towards reloading the roster at several key spots. 

If Higgins is too costly to keep, he's also too valuable to let walk immediately. Trading him could potentially net the Bengals a top-50 pick in this year's NFL Draft if they time it correctly, with "if" being the key word.

Creating cap space and adding a worthy draft pick would be the end goals of a Higgins trade, but acquiring both is much harder in reality. Once the tag is placed on Higgins, that $21 million cap figure goes on their books with free agency on the horizon. That's over one-third of their projected cap space they can no longer spend. 

The Bengals will need to trade Higgins as soon as possible in order to most effectively use the space a trade would create, and now we've arrived at the problem.  

Being proactive in trading away of their star players has never been a strength of the Bengals. The trades you can expect from them are player-for-player swaps involving low-level players, or disgruntled/aging starters. Billy Price and Carlos Dunlap are the most recent examples.

For obvious reasons, Higgins is viewed as a highly valued player in Cincinnati. Players with that label aren't openly advertised for other teams to start offering compensation packages. They want the best possible deal if they were to trade him away, and that may not arrive until interested teams become desperate enough to meet the Bengals' asking price. That won't be in the opening days of free agency.

As mentioned several paragraphs ago, this is all speculation based on history and precedent. The Bengals will surely hear from interested clubs about Higgins' availability at next week's NFL Scouting Combine. The next two weeks could be what's needed to lock in Higgins for the long haul, or formulate a trade that opens up free agency in a whole new way. 

The most likely outcome is neither, and Higgins carries the tag through the next four months at minimum. Cincinnati would have until July 15th to reach a long-term contract with the 25-year old receiver. 

Tee Higgins’ 2024 free agency contract projection

Will the Bengals be able to keep him?