5th year option
 

How is the salary for the 5th year option determined? i didn't look when it happened this past off season and i have a QB that is entering his 5th year and want to know what that might be while I decide about an extension. It seems like it is closer to the franchise tag than it is in real life.

Also, I don't think 1st round QBs get the automatic 5th year either.

I got to that point. It says it is the average of the top 5 and top 20. Not sure what that means. My QB ask would be 58MM. The #5 QB makes $69MM. The 20th ranked QB is 28MM. Is it the average of that range of QBs?

His extension off during free agency was only about 28MM salary cap.

I also think the NFL is based purely on salary and this appears to be cap charge.

I would expect that to mean that it works out the average of the top 5 salaries, and the average of the top 20 salaries, and then it averages those numbers to find the salary the QB will request.

If your top 20 players had salaries of 1, 2, 3, 4,.. 20, the average of their salaries would be 10.5, and the average of just the top 5 of them (16, 17, 18, 19, 20) would be 18. The average of 10.5 and 18 is 14.25, if you see what I mean?

There are multiple levels that the fifth-year option can be set at, depending on playing time and Pro Bowl team selections, with the highest level being equal to the franchise tag salary - Over The Cap has a good explanation: https://overthecap.com/fifth-year-option-projections

(This is the RL fifth-year option, of course - while I'm not familiar with how this has been implemented in FOF9, it's likely that Jim has mirrored this in-game.)

It looks like the 5th year option is all salary, no bonus. As a result, it seems like you should always take that option no matter what, since if you end up not wanting the player, you can just cut him. Is there a reason not to?

To me the reason would seem to be don't take the 5th year option and just sign him to a cheap contract rather than allocating a bunch of cap to the guy up front. He still shows up as a pending FA in that stage right before FA where you can still re-sign your own players.

Yup...that's how I've been handling it too.

Fifth year being all salary makes them a good trade candidate if you don't like them. Let the other team pay the salary, reneg them, while you get to keep the pick.