All NFL teams are now officially staring down the offseason now that the Super Bowl has concluded. The Cincinnati Bengals will need to tackle this offseason way more securely than their defense at all during the season.<\/p>\n
While many fans and analysts are firing up mock draft simulators, we will actually be diving into free agency far before that. We\u2019ll also know whether the team will actually hit edge rusher Trey Hendrickson with the franchise tag, as that deadline starts before free agency.<\/p>\n
We also have my favorite time of the offseason, the Legal Tampering Period, which takes place right before free agency. A time that was created because so many teams were illegally tampering that they couldn\u2019t keep punishing every team.<\/p>\n
2026 NFL offseason dates to know<\/p>\n
Feb. 17th: Teams may start franchise tagging playersFeb. 23 – Mar. 2nd: NFL Scouting combineMarch: Pro Days begin for draft-eligible playersMar. 3rd: Deadline for teams to franchise tag playersMar. 9th-11th: Legal Tampering period<\/p>\n
This is when teams are allowed to start talking to free agents from other teams in order to get a head start on free agency. Contracts may be discussed, but no deals are to be finalized during this time period (wink).<\/p>\n
Mar. 11th 4 PM: Start of the new league year and NFL Free agencyApr. 17: Deadline for restricted free agents to sign offer sheetsApr. 20th: The Bengals may begin offseason workoutsApr. 22nd: Deadline for teams to use right of refusal on restricted free agents who signed offer sheets with another team.Apr. 23rd-25th: NFL Draft in Pittsburgh, PA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All NFL teams are now officially staring down the offseason now that the Super Bowl has concluded. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":747127,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2053],"tags":[228,227,256,1561,2296,7,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-747126","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cincinnati-bengals","8":"tag-bengals","9":"tag-cincinnati","10":"tag-cincinnati-bengals","11":"tag-cincinnati-bengals-news","12":"tag-cincinnatibengals","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116058021179983249","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=747126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/747127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=747126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=747126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=747126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}