CHICAGO -- The Bears placed the franchise tag on veteran wide receiver Allen Robinson, the team announced Tuesday.
The Bears and Robinson's agent failed to reach an agreement on a long-term deal during last season, forcing Chicago to apply the tag or risk losing Robinson -- the club's top receiver the past three years -- in free agency.
Brandon Parker, Robinson's agent, told Schefter in September that Robinson was unhappy that the Bears had refused to offer him top-market money for a wide receiver, but that neither Robinson nor Parker requested a trade in advance of last year's NFL trade deadline.
"We have a history of extending our players," Bears general manager Ryan Pace said last week. "We usually find a way to make that work. The proof is kind of in the pudding with that. And every one of them is different. Every one of them is personal, and that's why I'm sensitive, and I hope you guys understand, about talking about that in the media.
"But it's a process. It takes both sides to work through that, and every one of them is unique. I do like to lean on our history. I think [director of football administration] Joey Laine does a great job of working through that and building relationships with those agents. Allen has a really good agent that we've worked with in the past, and it's a process. We're kind of going through that."
Robinson, 27, caught a career-high 102 passes for 1,250 yards in 2020 even as the Bears' offense struggled to find its groove until a late-season three-game winning streak allowed Chicago to sneak into the playoffs at 8-8.
In 2019, Robinson also led the Bears with 98 receptions for 1,147 yards and seven touchdowns. Robinson spent four years in Jacksonville (2014 to 2017), where he earned an invitation to the Pro Bowl after catching 80 passes for 1,400 yards and 14 touchdowns in 2015.
Robinson suffered a season-ending knee injury in Week 1 of 2017, his final year in Jacksonville, and was not fully healthy for the Bears in 2018. Even so, he recorded 55 receptions for 754 yards and four touchdowns in 13 games played.
"I know Allen wants to be a Chicago Bear [long term] and we want him to be a Chicago Bear, and it's a sensitive process that we're kind of in the middle of," Pace said. "And we gotta work through it."