T.J. Houshmandzadeh Is Unsure Whether or Not He Would Appreciate Being Franchised

The NFL did a smart thing (or rather, the owners did) by naming "Franchise Tag" what they did. It implies an importance to the franchise and denotes some sort of upper echelon status for certain players. There's only one problem -- the franchise tag essentially hurts the player because, while he gets a nice one year payday, there's little in the way of long term guaranteed money.

Which explains why T.J. Houshmandzadeh doesn't really know if he's cool with the Bengals franchising him.

"I don't know how I can put this," Houshmandzadeh said. "Would I be happy with it? Yeah, because it's a lot of money. But would I be happy with it? No, I wouldn't. I don't know if that makes sense.

"It's going to be my ninth year (in 2009). I didn't play (much) my first three, so I look at it as being my sixth year. You just want to know what's going to happen. If you get a franchise, they want to keep you for one year and that's it. It'd be cool, but it wouldn't be cool."

That's a pretty solid attitude to take -- other players have been vastly less amicable towards the notion of being locked down for a season, particularly since any sort of long term injury would essentially wipe out a big signing bonus that would come with a new contract.

Housh will still probably pull, as PFT notes, somewhere between $9 and $10 million next year, which is still a pretty freaking nice payday when everything sorts itself out. But at the same time, being designated the "Franchise of the Bengals" is like being called "FanHouse's Sexiest Bachelor". Believe me, it's not that exciting.