It's a special edition on this Monday afternoon of PFT PM.

Didn't really expect to be doing one today.

And at first blush, when I saw the news that the Bengals had applied the franchise tag for the

second straight year to receiver T. Higgins, I thought, can wait until Tuesday morning.

We got two hours of PFT live.

We can break it down then.

But then I decided there's enough here to at least address the issues that are implicated

by this decision by the Bengals to do something they've never done before.

They have never tagged a guy twice.

And for everyone they've ever applied the franchise tag to, he wasn't with the team the year after he had been tagged. And the only guy that ever got a long-term deal who was tagged by the

Bengals was receiver Carl Pickens. He signed a long-term deal,

but was cut after that one year following the application of the tag. So this is already

unprecedented for the Bengals. The question becomes what happens next. It was just last week,

the director of player personnel, Duke Tobin, told reporters they were working toward a

long-term deal with T. Higgins. Later that same day, Higgins took to social media to post the

cap emoji, which I have learned in recent years means he's saying someone is lying. Now, there was

nothing else that day that was out there about T. Higgins.

Maybe it dealt with something else, but common sense tells us that it probably had to do with what Tobin said.

And we know the players use social media to send messages. That's been established over the past few years.

So he didn't believe it last week when they said they were working toward

a long-term deal. And that's important now because in the official announcement by the Bengals

regarding the application to Tag the Higgins, they say they're doing it with the intent

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