Dallas Cowboys NFL 2015 News, Rumors: Franchise Tag on Dez Bryant?
It looks like Dez Bryant may be the first NFL player this year to get the franchise tag. Teams have until March 2 to apply the tag, and often times use the threat of a tag to help speed along negotiations on a longer term deal.
When a team applies the franchise tag the player is given a one year guaranteed contract at 120 percent of his salary from last season or the average of the top five salaries at his position which ever is higher. Even though this puts a lot of money into the player wallets most players do like getting the tag applied to them.
There is a certain dance that players and teams go through during this part of the off season and we have seen it play out many times before. Pro Football Talk is reporting that if the Cowboys apply the tag to Bryant that he will skip off season workouts. A move that will result in an insignificant fine for himself.
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Cowboys Executive Vice President Stephen Jones said this to the Dallas Morning News, "Right now all things being equal, it's leaning more Dez with the franchise than it is not, But that doesn't mean it will stay that way. We don't ever want to give up on a long-term deal. It's something we worked on all of last year and it kind of cooled off once we got into the season. We'll continue to see what our options are and things happen quickly as you go along. Things can go along with a lot not going on, but all of a sudden it happens."
Bryant had a less than receptive attitude on Twitter today when a fan tweeted that they liked the way Bryant was dedicated to the team. Bryant's response as reported by PFT was that he wished the team felt the same way about him.
