The Cincinnati Bengals know they have a good thing going. They also don't know exactly how to keep Tee Higgins around on a long-term contract.

Thus, for the second straight season, Cincinnati kept Joe Burrow in butter brickle by franchise tagging his WR2. Once he signs the tender, Higgins will be under contract through the 2025 season at a cost of $26.1 million.

That's both thrifty and expensive for the Bengals. Signing Higgins to a long-term deal against the backdrop of a record-high $279.2 million salary cap would have likely cost the team that landed him somewhere between $33 and $35 million annually. But using the tag means the full cost of the upcoming season will land squarely on the team's 2025 salary sheet, eating up more than a third of what was nearly $70 million in cap space for 2025 -- money that could have been spent overhauling a defense that fell apart in 2024 and extending Ja'Marr Chase in the final year of his rookie contract.

Tagging Higgins isn't the end of his 2025 offseason story. Cincinnati can still work out a long-term extension. It can work out a potential trade, ensuring something more than a compensatory pick should he leave. Or the two sides can work through the upcoming season and reassess as the Bengals attempt to figure out how to make the leap from good to great once more.

But Higgins's $26.1 million pay day won't just be felt in southwest Ohio. It's yet another pebble in the pond of free agency that will cast ripples out to all 32 franchises -- and push up the price across a relatively underwhelming class of available veterans.

With Higgins and Trey Smith both tagged, the top two members of a thin free agent crop are already locked in their current teams. Alaric Jackson re-signed with the Los Angeles Rams for three years and $57 million while the Washington Commanders used a chunk of their expansive cap space to acquire Deebo Samuel and his near-$17.5 million cap hit in exchange for a fifth-round pick.

This leaves 26 teams that currently have cap room to spare, per Over the Cap. Combined, they've got nearly $1.2 billion in space to add free agents. But the top players in that class are some combination of an oft-injured 31-year-old tackle (Ronnie Stanley), a safety from the league's ninth-best passing defense (Jevon Holland), a pass rushing specialist who has only had more than eight sacks once in seven NFL seasons (Josh Sweat) and a quarterback who is Sam Darnold (Sam Darnold).

The 2025 free agent marketplace will be a seller's market -- one that should evoke memories of Christian Kirk's surprising four-year, $72 million deal back in 2022. Teams have a surplus of cash to spend and a limited pool of proven difference makers on which to spend it. Players who may not be top 10 at their positions will be able to command top-of-market salaries because, well, who else are teams going to spend on?

A three-year, $60 million deal for Byron Murphy will be the kind of wave that ripples across choppy waters and sinks teams' offseason plans. It also reinforces a world in which 2025's biggest risers will be defined by their ability to target undervalued players and draft well. That's exactly what the Philadelphia Eagles did to overhaul their defense with Zach Baun ($3 million for All-Pro performance), Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean. Winning this offseason won't be about spending five-star money on four-star players but finding the two-star contracts that deliver above and beyond.

Ultimately, this is bad news for the New England Patriots, Las Vegas Raiders, Chicago Bears, Arizona Cardinals and any rebuilding team with oodles of cap space to spend. That dollar won't go as far as they hoped coming into the offseason. There will be bidding wars to pay trustworthy starters like Pro Bowlers.

The biggest new arrivals probably won't be stars like Higgins or Smith -- two guys who were more "very solid" than "superstar" to begin with -- but players like Darnold, Holland, Stanley and Tre'Von Moehrig. All good players, certainly, but none necessarily good enough to earn the hype and money they'll likely get in a vacuum where teams have tons of money and not enough studs on which to spend it. Thus, the backdrop for a boring run through the free agent marketplace; excepting, of course, our gawking at monster contracts for merely "pretty good" players.

This article originally appeared on For The Win: Tee Higgins's franchise tag means NFL free agency will be boring (and expensive)