Monday morning’s tag mania continues. A 13th team will use its tag. Less than ten minutes before the deadline, the Vikings will deploy their tag on safety Anthony Harris, Ian Rapoport of NFL.com tweets. It will cost the Vikings $11.4MM to use this tag.
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Harris was not viewed as a tag candidate, instead being set for free agency as one of the market’s top defenders. Now, he’ll be tethered to Minnesota’s payroll. The Vikings’ cuts of Xavier Rhodes and Linval Joseph, and their Kirk Cousins extension, helped create cap space to make a Harris tag possible.
Harris and Justin Simmons were the consensus top two options at the safety position, but the Broncos whittled that down recently by applying the franchise tag to their star in the secondary. Harris, a proven vet, has ranked among the league’s best safeties in his time with the Vikings. Understandably, the Vikes didn’t want to let him get away.
According to the advanced metrics at Pro Football Focus, Harris has been a top-five safety in each of the last two years. Between 2018 and 2019, he’s totaled nine interceptions, 17 passes defended, and 106 tackles.
Speculation among us Vikings fans seems to be that this is a move that will either result in a long-term extension at something close to this rate instead of the $13+ mil he might have gotten from another team, OR that this is merely the prelude to a trade.