Quote:
Originally Posted by milkman
When you use the franchise tag on positions like kicker and guard, it pushes the salaries up for other positions.
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The salary cap helps to limit the amount that other position salaries can escalate on the basis of a highly paid kicker or guard.
The benefit of the franchise tag, in addition to the obvious benefit of helping a team hang on to it's most important potential free agent each off season (if they so choose) is that it prevents superstar salaries from skyrocketing and eating up even more of the salary cap than they already do to the detriment of all the non-superstar players in the league. The only players hurt by the franchise tag are the guys that get tagged. All the other players benefit indirectly (even though it doesn't seem like most of them realize that).