How many players can be franchise tagged by a team during one season?

In the NFL, a franchise tag is a designation applied by a team to a player set to become an unrestricted free agent. This allows the team to retain the player’s rights and prevents them from negotiating with other teams. Each NFL team can use the franchise tag on only one player in any given season. This restriction is in place to maintain a level of competitive balance across the league, ensuring teams cannot overly dominate the free agent market by tagging multiple top players.

The franchise tag can be either exclusive, which prevents the player from negotiating with other teams, or non-exclusive, allowing them to seek offers from other teams with the original team having the right of first refusal. However, regardless of the type of franchise tag, a team is limited to tagging one player per season, which impacts how teams manage their rosters and salary cap strategies.

The other options would imply a flexibility in tagging multiple players, which is not allowed under NFL rules. The regulation that governs franchise tagging specifies that only one player may be tagged each season, reinforcing the reasoning behind the limitation.