When an NFL team tells a player he has been slapped with the so-called "franchise tag," chances are good he will react as if he has taken ill.
But in recent years, the league's salary cap system has proven to be as good a vaccination as anything else.
Despite large league-wide cap increases -- it should go up at least $10 million for an unprecedented fourth straight offseason when the new league calendar begins March 9 -- teams have proven to be so skittish about devoting unnecessarily large cap amounts to their best players that the tag has gone mostly unused in recent years.
From 2008-2012, a total of 65 players were slapped with the tag, an average of 13 per season. That stretch culminated in the record 2012 haul of 19 franchise-tagged players.
