5th Year Option for 2011 1st Round Picks

[Jared A]

Yes, but if we're going to just put in a large salary, with no SB/guarantees. You don't actually have to decide until right before week one of their last year. Since it's not a guaranteed contract until then.

[Strategist]

I have two questions about this.

1.) In the NFL, teams have decide this off season about those fifth year options for 2015. This would seem to imply to me that if the club executes the option, that fifth year must be guaranteed. Don't we need a similar mechanism?

2.) What happens to a players FA rights if a team declines the fifth year. Under the cut system mentioned above, the player would be a UFA with no extra bidding rights for the original team. Maybe some feel that is the right way to go. Personally, I think a team should keep their unlimited bidding rights if they don't execute the fifth year option. My reasoning is that I think the fifth year salaey is in the franchise tag ballpark. There are probably several valuable first round picks who still don't merit that kind of salary. In the NFL, a club may choose not to extend the fifth year but they would likely retain the home team benefits if they tried to extend the contract on more favorable terms.

1) I agree that it should become fully guaranteed like the nfl but I am not sure how we would accomplish that here.

2) Just because you don't pick up the option doesn't mean you cut them. You would still have them under contract for the 2015 season and the would become a FA after the year so you would still get your unlimited bidding.

[Strategist]

Yes, but if we're going to just put in a large salary, with no SB/guarantees. You don't actually have to decide until right before week one of their last year. Since it's not a guaranteed contract until then.

Well it would still count against their cap during the offseason but yes I agree that it should become fully guaranteed (like the nfl) if it is picked up.

[Strategist]

And their are other players that have been cut right before the season started that still counted against LTCs for the whole offseason so how is that much different?

[Jared A]

And their are other players that have been cut right before the season started that still counted against LTCs for the whole offseason so how is that much different?

But, their salaries were usually the same the year before. The difference is, this will be adding huge contracts ALL the time. Every year there will be a bunch of first rounders. It just adds to it.

[Goodell]

And their are other players that have been cut right before the season started that still counted against LTCs for the whole offseason so how is that much different?

But, their salaries were usually the same the year before. The difference is, this will be adding huge contracts ALL the time. Every year there will be a bunch of first rounders. It just adds to it.

I'm not sure this even is going to come up yet (thinking it's the next off-season after this one where those options come in when I looked at one example but I'll dig further as we go into off-season rules discussions and get into more issues). There is always lots of discussion about LTC calculations and usually some tweaks here and there.

I know teams are very interested in the best prices for their LTCs. That's understandable from an individual perspective. From a league perspective, though, it's different. I don't want the cheapest LTCs we can get. I don't want bargains or deals as much as we can avoid it. To me, it's always been a case of willing to pay a little extra to keep a player off the market and avoid competitive bids. So I'll always probably look at it a little differently than teams trying to get the lowest prices.

If a team has a massive contract that's a huge over-pay for an UNWORTHY player and doesn't cut them until just before the start of the regular season, they are really shooting themselves in the foot as far as limiting budget and cap flexibility during free agency, trades, and draft pick signings. Typically I think you see a lot of those big over-pay type cuts going into free agency or once it gets going and teams see they can sign a replacement for less so cut their ties to the over-paid guy and perhaps try to sign him for less.

I don't imagine it'll be a huge problem that a ton of unworthy first rounders making multitudes more than they are worth are just left on a teams salary cap and hurting them in free agency otherwise. It would be poor team management to get a big salary cap savings after all the big team improvement options are done. Typically you'd want to cut your bad contracts and have the cash savings to use it when the time is ripe to bid on their replacements. But certainly not all teams always make the best decisions, and maybe there is something to be said for not doing that and waiting until much later to cut ties with an overpaid player utilizing valuable cap space. I'd think most of those cases would be cut loose going into or during free agency, but I guess that's something to see.

[Strategist]

And their are other players that have been cut right before the season started that still counted against LTCs for the whole offseason so how is that much different?

But, their salaries were usually the same the year before. The difference is, this will be adding huge contracts ALL the time. Every year there will be a bunch of first rounders. It just adds to it.

People will start running out of money. Salaries can only get so high.

[Royce R]

Been scraping bye on salary cap for quite some time....

And their are other players that have been cut right before the season started that still counted against LTCs for the whole offseason so how is that much different?

But, their salaries were usually the same the year before. The difference is, this will be adding huge contracts ALL the time. Every year there will be a bunch of first rounders. It just adds to it.

People will start running out of money. Salaries can only get so high.

[charlie813brown]

Can we please make it where we decline the option but keep unlimiting FA bids? we should get some reward for drafting right.

[tino38]

Can we please make it where we decline the option but keep unlimiting FA bids? we should get some reward for drafting right.

Why should an award be given when we make a good selection? No such award takes place in the NFL. Every player, coach, GM, and owner knows it's every bit of a business as it is a game and they are all out to get paid.