The deadline came and went at 4 p.m. ET on Wednesday, and George Pickens is now officially playing the 2026 season on the $27.3 million franchise tag, ESPN reported. He is the only one of the NFL’s four tagged players who didn’t turn the tender into a long-term contract.
What makes the Pickens situation unusual is that nobody in Dallas is calling it a failure. The Cowboys said before the draft in April that they didn’t plan to negotiate a long-term deal with the receiver this year, per ESPN, preferring to let him play out the tag he signed that same month. Wednesday wasn’t a deadline the two sides raced toward and missed. It was one the team crossed off the calendar three months ago.
Pickens, for his part, has played along. He showed up for mandatory minicamp last month and said he was prepared to play the season on the tender, per CBS Sports. At $27.3 million, fully guaranteed, the one-year bet on himself is not exactly a hardship, and a big 2026 would set up either a franchise-tag rerun at a 120 percent raise or a monster open-market number in 2027.
The rest of the tag class settled early. Colts quarterback Daniel Jones turned his transition tag into a two-year, $88 million deal, Jets running back Breece Hall signed for three years and $43.5 million, and Falcons tight end Kyle Pitts got three years and $54 million from Atlanta a day before the deadline. NFL.com had flagged the day as drama-free in advance, and Pickens was the reason the prediction held: the only unsigned player was the one whose team had already announced it wasn’t negotiating.
So the receiver plays 2026 for $27.3 million, and the real negotiation between Pickens and the Cowboys starts eight months from now, with a season of film sitting on the table between them.
