Pride of Detroit
What you need to know about the Lions ability to exercise fifth-year options in 2025.
With the Detroit Lions 2024-25 season coming to a close, their roster begins its transition to the offseason. While most of the attention is paid to the Lions' pending free agents, the players from Detroit’s 2022 draft class enter a unique phase of their rookie contracts.
This offseason, the members of the Lions 2022 draft class who remain on Detroit’s roster will be entering the final year of their rookie contract and therefore become eligible for contract extensions. Additionally, players who were drafted in the first round are also eligible for a team-held fifth-year option.
That means, Aidan Hutchinson and Jameson Williams are eligible for an extension and a fifth-year option, while Josh Paschal, Kerby Joseph, and Malcolm Rodriguez are only eligible for extensions. The remaining players from that draft class—James Mitchell, James Houston, and Chase Lucas—are no longer under contract with the Lions.
For Hutchinson and Williams, they enter the fourth year of their rookie contracts, which are set to expire after the 2025 season. However, if the team elects to apply their fifth-year option, it would extend the length of the contract through 2026 by adding a fully guaranteed fifth year.
The NFL pre-determines the value of a player’s fifth-year option by applying three factors: 1) draft slot, 2) playing time, and 3) Pro Bowl selections. The popular salary cap website OverTheCap.com, does a good job of breaking down what those fifth-year options costs would look like for each player eligible, based on the incentives triggered.
For Hutchinson, he was drafted No. 2 overall, met the playing time incentives, and was selected to ONE Pro Bowl in 2023-24, meaning his contract moves up to the third tier.
OTC is projecting a fifth-year option of $22,612,000 (fully guaranteed) for the 2026 season.
For Williams, he was drafted with the No. 12 overall pick, but failed to meet the playtime incentives and was not selected to a Pro Bowl, therefore he remains at the lowest tier available for his draft position.
OTC is projecting a fifth-year option of $15,161,000 (fully guaranteed) for the 2026 season.
The NFL wants to give teams a reasonable amount of time to make a determination on a player’s fifth-year option and therefore allows each organization to wait until the conclusion of free agency and the NFL draft before assigning a deadline. Each year, the NFL sets the deadline for fifth-year options to be exactly one week after the first day of the NFL Draft.
In 2025, the deadline to apply a fifth-year option to an eligible player is May 1.
Yes. Because a player eligible for a fifth-year option is also eligible for a contract extension, the team could opt to...
