Texans’ Clowney gets stuck with franchise tag
The deadline just passed for franchisetagged players to lose the tag and sign long-term extensions, and every player with any leverage who wanted to wriggle out of the tag managed to do it except for Texans pass rusher Jadeveon Clowney. Even a kicker fared better than Clowney! Robbie Gould had made noise about demanding a trade back to the Bears, but the 49ers signed him a two-year, $10 million deal that increases to $15 million guaranteed if the Niners pick up a third-year option.
It looked like Falcons DT Grady Jarrett would join Clowney in the tagged and unhappy group, but just an hour before the deadline, Jarrett agreed to a four-year extension with the Falcons. It was not immediately clear how much of the $68 million in that deal was guaranteed, but Garrett’s tag for this season was $15.2 million.
That’s about the same amount that Clowney will earn this season — $15.96 million, to be exact — if he signs the franchise tag that the Texans have tendered him. He hasn’t yet, and Adam Schefter reports that he plans on sitting out most of training camp in hopes of an extension. Clowney’s been excellent the last two years, racking up 9.5 sacks in 2017 and nine last year.
Le’Veon Bell tested the limits of player power against the franchise tag by sitting out the entire 2018 season and not getting paid a dime for it. (The question of whether he made more money signing with the Jets a year later is extremely complicated.) Clowney is unlikely to go that far, but the plan right now is to skip training camp and a good chunk of the preseason.
One way the Texans could resolve this is by leaving the tag on Clowney, but accurately describing him. The 26year-old played 830 snaps on the defensive line last year, mostly at the ends, but Houston tagged him as a linebacker — where the tag’s value is well below the defensive end figure of $17.1 million.
After the deadline passed, Schefter reported the the NFL players’ association plans on filing a grievance against the Texans over the positional dispute.
Complicating things slightly is that the Texans don’t have a GM, and they may have fired their old one in part because he wanted to give Clowney a long-term extension while head coach Bill O’Brien didn’t.