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Cincinnati Bengals backup quarterback AJ McCarron should find out soon if he's a restricted free agent or an unrestricted free agent. McCarron said after the season that he should know the outcome of his grievance, filed against the Bengals, by Feb. 15. While McCarron believes he should be free to sign with any team when the free agency opens on March 14, the Bengals believe he didn't accrue enough time on the active roster to get that designation. Therefore, they think they should still have his rights. McCarron filed the grievance last spring and has been waiting a long time to hear the result, but it's a tricky situation. According to the NFL CBA, players with four or more accrued seasons will become unrestricted free agents at the conclusion of their contracts. However, to accrue a season toward free agency, the player must spend at least six games that year on "full pay status." The CBA says that does not include "games for which the player was on: the Exempt Commissioner Permission List, the Reserve PUP List as a result of a nonfootball injury, or a Club’s Practice Squad." McCarron spent most of his rookie season on the non-football injury list after the Bengals selected him in the fifth round of the 2014 draft out of Alabama. McCarron came to the Bengals with a shoulder issue that affected his ability to throw in OTAs. He participated in minicamp but was placed on NFI before training camp.  The NFI list is reserved for players that had an injury that took place away from the team, which can include injuries that happened in college. That's part of the basis of McCarron's case. According to the team website, one part of the case revolves around "whether the Bengals used a proper medical basis to determine that McCarron suffered his shoulder injury elsewhere and was eligible for NFI."
If McCarron had been placed on regular PUP (for injuries that happened with the team) or injured reserve instead, he would have been able to accrue a year toward free agency. There's also the issue of whether McCarron was healthy enough to come off the list at an earlier date. ESPN's Adam Schefter reported that McCarron believed he could have come off the NFI list in training camp. Players can come off PUP or NFI at any time before the season, but once the season began, they cannot practice for six weeks. They then have another six-week window to begin practicing, and a three-week window after that for the team to decide whether to put them on IR, cut them or activate them. McCarron was not activated until Dec. 9, which was Week 15 of the season and too late for him to accrue a season. Part of the issue is whether the Bengals kept a healthy player on the NFI list. If the Bengals win the grievance, they can and almost certainly will tender him, which would give him a one-year contract at a set amount. The tender amounts for 2018 have not been yet, but in 2017, a first-round tender was $3.91 million, a second-round tender was $2.746 million and an original-round tender was $1.797 million. The Bengals can choose to match any offer another team might give him, decline to match and receive a draft pick in return, or McCarron could sign his tender and a trade could be worked out. McCarron was just minutes away from being traded to the Cleveland Browns in the fall, but the deal to send a second- and third-round pick to the Bengals for him fell apart when Cleveland missed its deadline to send in the paperwork. It's been a long, but amicable waiting process, and McCarron said he understands it's just business. But he longs to be on a team where he could get a chance to be a starter. That's probably not going to happen in Cincinnati. "Anytime you come into a place with a guy that's established like [Andy Dalton], who has led them to the playoffs however many times and they're paying him that much, it's not going to happen," McCarron said at the end of the season. He added: "Like I told [coach Marvin Lewis], I'd love to have my chance. That's all I want, but it's out of my control. ... As a competitor, you see other guys playing and you want your chance to be able to showcase what you can truly do. That's just being a competitor."
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