The window for NFL teams to use a one-year franchise tag opened on Tuesday and it will close on March 5.
The Denver Broncos have used a franchise tag eight times in the past, most recently on safety Justin Simmons in 2021. The team’s streak of not using a tag seems likely to extend to three years this spring.
The Broncos do not have an obvious candidate for the franchise tag in 2024. Denver’s most notable pending free agents are center Lloyd Cushenberry, linebacker Josey Jewell, safety P.J. Locke, kicker Wil Lutz and tight end Adam Trautman.
There’s no way the Broncos would pay the franchise tag rate for a linebacker ($22,748,000), safety ($16,224,000) or tight end ($12,027,000) in 2024 for Jewell, Locke or Trautman. It wouldn’t make sense to use the offensive line tag ($19,885,000) on Cushenberry, either.
Not even a kicker tag ($5,670,000) could be justified for Lutz, who had a cap hit of $1.7 million last season. Lutz’s cap hit ranked 21st out of 32 kickers last year. Tagging him in 2024 would place him among the five highest-paid kickers in the league (in terms of cap charges). With Denver facing a cap pinch, Lutz is unlikely to receive a huge pay raise.
The Broncos will have to make some tough decisions to get under the cap this spring and the team probably can’t afford to use a franchise tag.
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