One of the biggest omissions from the list of players receiving franchise tags is Harold Landry. According to Tom Pelissero of NFL Network, the Titans elected not to tag him (Twitter link).
While the team still hopes to get a long-term deal done, Landry is now one week away from free agency. The 25-year-old is coming off a breakout season, where he essentially set career highs across the board. Playing the full regular season, he notched 75 tackles, 12 sacks and one forced fumble. He added 1.5 sacks in the team’s playoff loss to Cincinnati. Those numbers earned him a trip to the Pro Bowl for the first time.
The tag would have cost Tennessee $18.7M – a massive raise for Landry compared to his rookie deal, but a guarantee he’d be in the fold for at least the 2022 campaign. A longer-term contract could end up around that figure on a per-year average, according to some estimates.
When discussing a potential deal, Titans general manager Jon Robinson said “we’re going to do our best to keep him“. The situation is complicated by the team’s current salary cap circumstances. The Titans are presently projected to be over the cap by nearly $8M, so plenty of other moves would be needed to accommodate a new Landry contract of any kind. What the team does in the coming days, then, will now be one of the most important storylines in the updated context of the free agent market.
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