Patriots Don't Use Franchise Tag As Brown, Flowers, And Gostkowski Will Enter Free Agency

Yesterday (Tuesday) at 4 pm ET marked the NFL's deadline for all 32 teams to apply their franchise tag on one player, which would prevent them from entering free agency.

The Patriots elected not to use theirs, following suit with 25 other teams.

Offensive tackle Trey Brown, defensive end Trey Flowers, and kicker Steven Gostkowski were the three players the Patriots could've used their franchise tag on.

Franchise tag number for DE Trey Flowers was $17.1 million, for OT Trent Brown $14.06 million and K Stephen Gostkowski $5.9 million. Patriots' actions reflect they deemed that too rich. Standard operating procedure for club is to keep dialogue open with players as market evolves.

— Mike Reiss (@MikeReiss) March 5, 2019

New England has applied a franchise tag nine times, with Gostkowski in 2015 being the last player to be on the receiving end of it.