NFL franchise tag season starts tomorrow

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Call clickgrainger.com or just stop by. Grainger, for the ones who get it done. Senior NFL writer, CBSSports.com, Picsics Podcast moderator, because tomorrow we get to celebrate franchise tag day.

It's a glorious occasion. Are the Carolina Panthers going to franchise tag Brian Burns again? I don't think the Panthers are singing Brandy to Brian Burns, because if they were, they'd lock it up, right? The franchise tag is widely considered by players, and it's changed a little bit over the past few years, but widely considered by players to be sort of, you know, it says you've been dating for a long time. You won't pop the question. It's like, all right, you let me enough to prevent me from going to get paid.

Why don't you just pay me yourself? And so I think, yeah, they probably will, but I think they haven't been able to get on the same page with Brian Burns in terms of what he wants and what they want to give him. It's possible that it's one of those days where franchise tag, we see him get traded. We see that with Edrus.

Edrus is a lot. And remember, he was, I mean, reportedly, they turned out two first-round picks to the Rams for him, which was, in hindsight, quite stupid. You know, he'd still get a pretty good haul from him in a year where you were still rebuilding. Like, you've got a quarterback on a rookie contract, but it's not like, you know, this is not like a Seahawks or 49ers, because you'll see us in the roster, 49ers with a party situation where it's like, you build around a guy because you have talent.

Like, they don't have a whole lot. Now, I think Brian Burns is a foundational player, and so I mean, I have no problem franchise tagging Brian Burns, which, I mean, the Panthers have a pretty good history of using franchise tag. He was a punter one year. They did. Todd Sauerbrunn got franchise tagged.

It's amazing. Todd Sauerbrunn. Yeah.

Man, he'd, you know, talk about a good hot dog topic. The Sauerbrunn, the, the, the father tagging, and then I think, I mean, like, I don't know if a trade will happen. I think that's probably on the lower end of outcomes. You have until July 15th-ish to work on a long-term deal.

If it hadn't gotten there yet, it's kind of hard to imagine doing it. But, you know, we tend to see these things happen a little more frequently in recent years, I think, with the franchise tag. So, yeah, I say, I mean, I will ultimately say tag, no deal, get to camp and have a whole thing.

All right. So here's my, my question of my follow-up to the Brian Burns. Will they tag him? Does it make it easier or more difficult to trade Brian Burns if you have franchise tagged him?

Well, whoever, whoever, I mean, it makes sense. I guess, does it matter, like, he has to accept the franchise tag, right? It doesn't really matter because, like, whoever trades for him is, you know, it's a factor. We're going to give him a contract extension. So, the tag number, which counts against the whole tag number, which is one year fully guaranteed deal that counts fully against the salary cap, won't necessarily matter for the new team because as part of the trade compensation, the team receiving Brian Burns, you know, works with his agent to negotiate a new deal.

So, like, almost as soon as he's traded for, you see that extension announced. Okay. All right. So, it won't matter.

It won't matter to trading. Look, I have been saying this. And this is a point of reference, we've seen Frank Clark traded on the tag as an edge rusher and somebody else recently, and I can't think of it right now.

Well, it doesn't matter. I've been saying, I said it last year, before the trade deadline, when they traded Christian McCaffrey, that this should be the move. They should trade Brian Burns. I don't understand. But, you know, I talked to enough people in Charlotte that believe that they should continue to build around Brian Burns.

I don't know how they do that. He's a great player. No problem building around him, but, like, what are you building? That's my point. Yeah, you're not at the point in your franchise evolution where, you know, you can go out and give a huge extension to, even if he's still young, I mean, you're going to have him through his prime. But, like, by the time that you get, I mean, if you're being realistic about the Panthers, you know, you're on your, what, seventh head coach in five years.

You're on your new GM. You know, a GM that was with the team last year, by the way, Dan Morgan, who should know that this is not a one-year turnaround deal, even if you expect the most out of Bryce Young, you'd think David Allison's a great coach. This is a two- to three-year deal at best. And while, like, having Ryan Burns for the next two to three years makes your team better, and I agree that you don't want to give away and lose, you know, if you can get a mid-first-round pick for him, and you forget the salary cast face and you find an edge rusher, you know, to replace, it's a very difficult balance when your team is terrible. Well, Brinson is joining us here. Would you take a mid-first-round, not even a mid-first-round pick, because we wouldn't know.

Would you take a first-round pick, not in this year's draft, but a future draft next year in exchange for Brian Burns, or would it have to be significantly more than that if you're not getting the return right now? Listen up. I won't sugarcoat it. This is the longest cold flu analogy season we've ever seen, but we're not alone. We've got Instacart. Sure, you may be a coughing snot faucet who just wants Mommy, but you're not giving up. Not when cold medicine, fragrant herbal teas, and honey shaped like bears can be delivered through Instacart in as fast as 30 minutes. Now let's go win the sick playoffs. Daddy, I just want my soup.

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Call clickgrainger.com or just stop by. Grainger, for the ones who get it done. I think about the Panthers. I trade away Brian Burns, and I've made this I think I think the PR aspect of it probably needs to be this year, right? Um, he's a really good draft.

It's not like it's loaded with offensive players, and so you're going to see defensive players fall down the board pretty good. But I think, um, you know, quarterbacks, obviously with the big three and Jake, Nate, Jake needles and Ken Williams. Those guys are, you know, the value of those quarterbacks make these first round picks this year that much more valuable. And look, you can go back to last year and look at the trade for Bryce Young and also know that everybody knew Caleb Williams is coming out. Everybody knew Jake made was coming out, right? First round picks this year were more valuable than first round picks last year, and the papers gave away the most valuable one. Yes, they did. The Chicago Bears are everybody's fascination in this offseason.

It has been a nonstop conversation over. Do they keep Justin Fields and trade the pick and could they trade back? Could they? Well, could they trade back to number two to number three and still get one of those other quarterbacks and get a sizable Hall?

You could make any argument that I mean, who knows down the road who's going to be the best quarterback of the three, right? Whether it's the general. Yeah, I mean, I think I think nobody needs to go by the general consensus being different oftentimes leads to more success going against the grain. But but a great article is getting rid of Peter King's fmi and column to a details you like this. It is how Jordan speed golfer Jordan speed disqualified this past weekend. Yes. The rhythm was at the center of the drama surrounding Drew Brees and Patrick Mahomes during the 2017 NFL Draft. Interesting.

I like that one teaser Jordan's feet was at the center of the drama. Okay. That's fine. He's in the same. He's in the same draft room. They wanted the homes.

And I mean, just like Sean Payton told Steve, we want homes. And he's like, but don't tell me. And then all of a sudden, I found out that Drew Brees is going to be the draft from Tuesday. I haven't told you that. So don't think that's amazing. That's fantastic.

Yeah, so good. Never mind. Whenever I come to contracted in Las Vegas. And I haven't felt bad. But that's fine.

That's fine. You know what? You call it whatever you want. Well, your secret.

Your secret is safe with us. You call it. You call it.

I wish it was Vegas Blue. You call it whatever you want. Now, nobody's going to doubt you. Yeah.

You know, you're you're an upstanding citizen. Every once in a while. There's a bug. It's got Piotrkaczkaz, he's not going to play tonight. It's going to be Spencer Martin. So at the last time I felt this bad was the last time the cheese before you guys played the Super Bowl.

That was February 2020. Okay, take a different turn this time. But yeah, I mean, I think that no, I mean, I think that, like, at the top of the board, if you're the bears.

And everything they should do this. times, we see GMs and coaches take the path of least resistance or the path that is most commonly believed to be correct, particularly in these situations. For instance, the Panthers taking Bryce Young, it's like, he's the consensus top guy. No one's going to kill me for it. And people kill him for the trade-off, but no one kills him for taking Bryce Young, right? Even though CJ's young. Well, no, no, I think they kill them for both, even though they shouldn't kill the Panthers for taking Bryce young, at least right now, if you're the bears and you train out of the first round out of the first and you keep fields and you build around them with all those picks. No, no, no.

It's awesome. You get absolutely everybody gets fired. You don't know that. I don't know that everybody gets fired if you draft him Williams and he's not great, but I mean, yeah, I think I just think he'll stay there. And trade, move around with another pick to try to find maybe Barbara Harrison Jr. Maybe trade fields to Atlanta, New England, something like that.

How many first round picks did the bears give up to move from three to two to take Mitch Trubisky? Right. So they moved up one spot.

Yeah. So second or third, if I'm here to give them first, Washington would flip picks. If Washington wants Caleb Williams, they could move up one spot.

And what do you also give them? You probably give up a future one and maybe that's all you have to give up as a future one. But if you're the bears, is it worth doing that? And I would say the answer is probably yes. Yeah. I mean, unless you think Caleb Williams is so much better than the other two quarterbacks. Well, I mean, there is the issue of like drafting another Carolina quarterback at number two overall, which might trigger bear fans.

Yeah. But at least Drake Mays had two full seasons as a starter, as opposed to, I mean, Drake, I mean, Drake made is a Mitzi talented and I mean, I've seen Drake may play a ton. He's very good quarterback. I just, if watching you would do it for, this is one of those drafts where you have, you have killed, it's sort of like when Andrew, I don't say he's Andrew looks foul, but I mean, he's been given a lot of praise. It was Mike Holger, who's the GM for Cleveland at the owner's meetings in Phoenix that year, walked into Ryan Grisham was the GM for the Colts at the time and Holger dad, the third pick, cause I think he took trip Richardson there. He walked into him and he says, I will give you my entire draft for the first overall pick and Ryan Grayson turned him down. So I mean, it's like two spots, my entire draft, like offered him through their civil lemonade.

And the story goes in the offer to meet the tire draft. Grayson said, no, you take it to luck. I think it's like, if, if you believe Caleb Williams is a surefire is in this river, you just have to, you can't go, you can't move.

That's fine. If, if, if, if that's why I said, if, if you believe that Caleb Williams is it, then you don't do it. But if you don't think that he is a definite surefire thing, or maybe it's very possible, cause I wouldn't, it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility that somebody looked at Drake may and said, I think Drake may is going to be better.

If you, then if you're Chicago, then you are open to that discussion as, you know, especially if it gets you another draft, even get you a one next year, they're loaded with draft picks about it. I mean, the, the, the issue is that you have most, I think most people actually have Caleb Drake and Jayden Daniels closer or flipped higher than Drake. And then Caleb sort of, is there a tear down? I mean, obviously it's correct. I saw it. I saw Jayden Daniels listed first by somebody. I don't remember who it was. It was not you will Brinson. I know you'll have a mock draft up at cbssports.com soon because everybody has to, they haven't called me and asked me for mine yet, but I'll work for the company.

Will Brinson pick six podcasts, senior NFL writer, cbssports.com. My friend, we'll talk to you later. Without the ones like you who work tirelessly to keep things running, everything would suddenly stop. Hospitals, factories, schools, and power plants.

They all depend on you. No matter the weather emergency or time of day. You're the ones who get it done at Grainger. We're here for you with professional grade industrial supplies. Count on real time product availability and fast delivery call click Grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.