NFL offseason schedule: Key dates for franchise tags, free agency, OTAs
Tee Higgins.
With the NFL’s 104th season in the books, the calendar shifts to the offseason. As teams prepare for free agency and the draft, here are the important dates to file away:
- Window for teams to apply franchise or transition tags: Feb. 20-March 5
- Legal tampering period, enabling contact with free agents tied to other teams: March 11
- Start of the 2024 league year and official free agency: March 13
- Offseason workouts begin: April 1 (teams with new head coaches); April 15 (teams with returning HCs)
- Final day for teams to conduct “30” visits with draft prospects: April 17
- Restricted free agent signing period ends: April 19
- 2024 NFL Draft: April 25-27
- Deadline for teams to exercise fifth-year options on 2021 first-round picks: May 2
- Deadline for teams to extend franchise-tagged players: July 15
The period for teams to use franchise tags on players expires at 3 p.m. CT on March 5. More action tends to come near the end of this window, as last year’s Giants situation showed. Until an extension is reached or the tag is rescinded, teams must carry a tagged player’s tender number on their cap sheet.
Teams have until July 15 to sign tagged players to extensions. Otherwise, these performers will be prevented from engaging in extension talks until January 2025. Tag-and-trade transactions can still occur following that July 15 date.
The legal tampering period begins at 11 a.m. CT on March 11. Although clubs have exclusive negotiating rights with their own free agents, that ends when the tampering period opens. Unsigned players can speak with any team beginning March 11.
Since the NFL introduced the tampering period, it has become the window in which most of the top free agents reach contract agreements. No deals can be official until the start of the 2024 league year (3 p.m. CT on March 13), but most of the top UFAs have selected a destination by that point in recent years.
Fifth-year option tender prices for 2021 first-round picks are not yet available, but these decisions have warranted longer examinations from teams due to the 2020 CBA shifting them from guaranteed for injury to fully guaranteed. The 2020 first-round class featured a record-low (12) number of options exercised last year. Teams have until shortly after the draft to make decisions on 2021 first-round picks’ free agency timelines.
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