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Pittsburgh Steelers 2013 Franchise Tag Candidates

Published by

stevenlourie

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WR Mike Wallace

This is an interesting one. Under normal circumstances, Wallace would appear to be an obvious candidate for the franchise tag because the Steelers don’t really have any other pending free agents worth the tag. However, Wallace could hold out into the 2012 season and the Steelers probably wouldn’t reward him with a franchise tag if he does that. They also are pretty backed up against the cap after extending Antonio Brown, so they might not have the cap space to tag Wallace or even extend him at all, even if he reports before the start of the 2012 season.

Likelihood: Somewhat unlikely

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  1. mikewormack Avatar
    mikewormack

    It is obvious the Steelers will franchise Mike Wallace, first they aren’t entertaining trade offers and secondly the cost to franchise him is probably less of a hit over the next three years. Franchising Wallace for the next year and the year after would mean Mike Wallace is a Steeler for 25 million dollars over the next three years. This also means no guarantee money for Wallace, btw which should make him want to get a contract signed. Thirdly Wallace has a lot of potential and the Steelers aren’t going to simply say let him go next off season, or they would have already traded him. Wallace is in a position to make a lot of money, just not as much as he wants.

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    1. Steven Lourie Avatar
      Steven Lourie

      Franchise tag values are the “assigned” positional value or 120% of the player’s last season salary. If the franchise tag value for wide receivers in 2013 was like 10 million, Wallace would get 10 million in 2013 and 12 million if re-franchised again in 2014. Then if they chose to re-franchise him again in 2015, they would, by rules, have to guaranteed him 144% of his 2014 salary, which would be about 17.28 million. Franchising him 3 times would essentially be a 3 year, 40 million dollar deal with no wiggle room to restructure it in a cap friendly way. The Steelers had to cut and restructure several player’s deals just to get under the cap this offseason and will likely have to do the same next offseason, when Brown’s extension kicks in. I don’t see anyway they can afford him long term. The only reason they aren’t listening to trade offers and is because they, rightfully, think they can compete this season and don’t want to weaken their core. As long as they’re a contending team, one season of Wallace is worth more to them than the 2nd round pick or so in 2013 that they would receive in a trade for him.

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