As of Tuesday, NFL teams may designate a franchise player with a tag that would ensure that one of their impending free agents stays for at least one more year. While the Miami Dolphins have a long list of players set to hit the market in March, don’t expect them to use the franchise tag on any of them.
While the franchise tag guarantees that a player won’t hit free agency for at least another year, it comes with a contract for one season that’s based on the top five salaries at the position.
Only one Dolphins player due to hit free agency jumps out as a logical candidate for a one-year deal that large: safety Jevón Holland.
Holland, who turns 25 in March, is expected to be one of the top free agents on the market with PFF projecting he’ll get close to $20 million per year. While the NFL hasn’t officially announced the franchise tag totals, OverTheCap projected it’d cost $19.6 million to tag a safety.
But even if the tag is market value to retain Holland, that’s far from an easy total for the Dolphins to stomach. Even after parting with three veterans last week, Miami needs to do a lot more roster management to get under the projected salary cap. There are avenues to make it work, but eating a $20 million guaranteed salary for a player would create more problems than it solves.
If Holland was playing at a Pro Bowl level, that’d be a more reasonable proposition. But the safety had a subpar year in 2024, finishing with zero interceptions and a career-worst 63.0 grade from PFF.
Affording to use the franchise tag wouldn’t be easy for the Dolphins, and it wouldn’t make sense for them to force it in 2025.