[FarmBoy]

I think each time you franchise a player he gets a bigger multiple of the franchise amount. So theoretically you could keep him forever, but it ruins your salary cap after a couple of times.

I've not found any documentation on what explicitly happens with multi-year franchise tags. One article I found (http://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2015/2/16/79...dez-bryant) descrbes the franchise tag this way:

Each team is given one franchise tag to use per season, and it locks in a player for one year. For that year, he'll earn either an average of the top five salaries at his position, or 120 percent of his salary from the season before, depending on which one is larger.

If you expect to pay top 3 for the position dollars to your QB, you could save money by franchising them. A franchised QB would cost $18.5M in 2015 and Luck is expected to get a $20M a year contract. Actually, rereading the above rule, if a player is franchised after earning $18.5M, then the next year they would earn $22.2M and the following year $26.6M, so I guess there is a built in multiplier effect and franchising beyond one year means you're probably paying top dollar on a year by year bases. Aside from that, you have an angry superstar, you can't franchise tag any other players if it's tied up, you may alienate future free agents, etc.

[FarmBoy]

I think each time you franchise a player he gets a bigger multiple of the franchise amount. So theoretically you could keep him forever, but it ruins your salary cap after a couple of times.

I've not found any documentation on what explicitly happens with multi-year franchise tags. One article I found (http://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2015/2/16/79...dez-bryant) descrbes the franchise tag this way:

Each team is given one franchise tag to use per season, and it locks in a player for one year. For that year, he'll earn either an average of the top five salaries at his position, or 120 percent of his salary from the season before, depending on which one is larger.

If you expect to pay top 3 for the position dollars to your QB, you could save money by franchising them. A franchised QB would cost $18.5M in 2015 and Luck is expected to get a $20M a year contract. Actually, rereading the above rule, if a player is franchised after earning $18.5M, then the next year they would earn $22.2M and the following year $26.6M, so I guess there is a built in multiplier effect and franchising beyond one year means you're probably paying top dollar on a year by year bases. Aside from that, you have an angry superstar, you can't franchise tag any other players if it's tied up, you may alienate future free agents, etc.