There was a high chance that the Cincinnati Bengals would franchise tag Tee Higgins, and that's exactly what they did. Higgins broke the news himself with a 1-word message on social media that said “tag.”

Shortly after, NFL Network's Ian Rapoport confirmed the news.

“The Bengals have, in fact, franchise tagged WR Tee Higgins a second time, per Tee Higgins. No surprise, as Cincy is not in the business of letting good players walk away. They’ll hope to do a long-term deal after the more than $26M tag,” Rapoport wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Though this is Higgins' second time being tagged, the hope is that they can come to a long-term deal with him soon.

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The Bengals have been making moves over the past few weeks to create cap space so they can keep some of their core players. Other than Higgins, JaMarr Chase and Trey Hendrickson are the two players who the Bengals want to bring back, and they're going to cost a lot of money.

The Bengals recently released guard Alex Cappa after spending three years with the team, and they cleared an extra $8 million in cap space with the move. About a week ago, the Bengals released defensive tackle Sheldon Rankins, and they cleared almost $10 million in cap space with that move.

With those moves, the Bengals had a total of $69 million to work with in cap space, and there's a good chance that more changes will be coming. Another idea the Bengals might have to create more space is to restructure Joe Burrow's deal and backload some of his money in his contract.

It sounds like Burrow would be willing to do whatever it takes to keep the core guys on the team, and he's ready to get back into the playoffs and compete for a championship.