Is the 5th-year option still a viable pption for team building?

Robert Mays· Host0:00

Welcome to The Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays. Today, we're digging into fifth-year options for the 2023 draft class. The deadline was last week, but there were some notable decisions that were made around this year's fifth-year option crop, especially a guy like Jack Campbell. The Lions decided not to pick up his option despite him being an All-Pro last year. We know the reasons for that. Linebackers are lumped in with edge rushers. It pumps up the value of that position, makes a team like the Lions a little bit more hesitant to pick up that option, similar to what happened with Tyler Linderbaum last year. So we wanted to use the Jack Campbell news and that conversation just as an entry point into the 2023 class and what it tells us about fifth-year options in general. There are half a dozen, even more players in this group that I think are notable touch points that allow us to just discuss where the fifth-year option practice is in the NFL, period. So, that's what me and Dave did today. We looked at the 2023 draft, the choices the teams made around these fifth-year options, and what it can tell us about the state of the fifth-year option considerations and discussions in the NFL right now. So let's get to it right now. [upbeat music] We're a few days late on this, but we were talking about-- We were talking last week about some of the things we wanted to dig into now that we were in the off-season, and the fifth-year option deadline was late last week