I was using this site as reference material

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/agent...s-in-2020/


Assuming Yannick doesn't agree to a deal by the franchise deadline of March 10th (period starts Feb 25th), I think most people assume we will franchise him.  But there's two types.  Exclusive and non-exclusive.  I'm wondering whether they might be better off using the non-exclusive tag.

A lot depends on how hard core Yannick's desire to leave Jax is.  If we use the tag, he has till July 15th to sign a multi-year deal.  If he doesn't all we can do is a one year deal. 

Even in this situation you can trade a guy like the Clowney trade on Aug 31st.  Clowney netted two players, Jacob Martin and Barkevious Mingo, and a 2020 third-round pick.

But the reason they traded Clowney was that he refused to sign the contract and play.  He probably would have in Week 8 or whatever week is the deadline to count as having fulfilled your contract.  As you see with Trent Williams, even that can be messy.

So would they be better off doing the non-exclusive tag?  That would give Yannick and his guys almost 5 months to find a team willing to take on his contract and give up 2 first round draft choices.  If it ever happened, I assume the team would wait until after the draft so the draft picks would be 2021 and 2022 picks.  We'd have the option to take the contract they agreed to, but sometimes they are able to put in provisions we can't match like a lot of upfront money in year 1 when we have a cap problem.  But even if we don't agree to match, we get 2 numbers ones.

Obviously, we're better off signing him, but if we are going to tag him, I think the non-exclusive gives us better options.

What do you think?

---