Cliff Avril may hold out if tagged

[truebluefan]

Defensive end Cliff Avril said he will contemplate holding out from the Detroit Lions' offseason program and training camp if the team uses its franchise tag on him rather than negotiate a long-term deal.

"There's a lot of different possibilities, and that's one of the possibilities -- not showing up," Avril told the Detroit Free Press on Saturday. "But we don't know. That's not the plan, obviously. But there's a lot of different possibilities, and that's definitely one of them."

The Lions can use the franchise tag on Avril to keep him off the market with a one-year deal for the average of the five highest-paid defensive ends as soon as Monday or as late as March 5.

"I don't want to be franchised," Avril told the newspaper. "That's basically what I got last year. The (restricted free-agent) tender was basically the same thing. I just want security and longevity."

Read more: http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/759184...ns-tag-him