The Seattle Seahawks are not intending to use the franchise tag.
On Thursday, general manager John Schneider said that he had no plans of using the tag on any of the Seahawks free agents. The list of players hitting free agency include Michael Bennett, Steven Haushka and Gold Tate.
“I don’t anticipate us having to do that,” Schneider said in an interview with 710 ESPN Seattle radio. “It’s definitely a tool that you have in your back pocket, but at this point where we are with our unrestricted free agents, I don’t anticipate us using it.”
“Where we are right now is trying to keep this thing together as long as we possibly can,” Schneider said. “I’m not looking forward to the tough decisions ahead us. You’re affecting people’s lives and people you’ve become very close with.
“But in order to be a consistent championship-caliber team, you have to draft well, be able make tough decisions and live with those decisions. We don’t want to be a team that cruises in for a year and cruises out.”
And Schneider labeled the re-signing of Tate as one of the biggest things on his to do list.
“It’s a big priority,” Schneider said. “Golden knows where we stand how much we love and how much we want him on this team.”
With the Seahawks young core of players starting to hit free agency things are only going to get more difficult. Sooner or later they will have to work out new deals for Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas and Russell Wilson.
