How NFL Teams Evaluated Their Own 2015 Draft

How NFL Teams Evaluated Their Own 2015 Draft

Seeing which players were given fifth-year options and which weren’t is a pretty good clue as to how teams look at their own draft performance

Full Artcle: [www.theringer.com]

By Danny Heifetz May 8, 2018, 6:00am EDT

Actions speak louder than words in the NFL. While teams are going to spend the rest of the offseason saying they love the players they selected in the 2018 draft, the same front offices just showed us how they truly feel about their players from the 2015 draft.

Under the collective bargaining agreement, rookies drafted in the first round sign (mostly) guaranteed four-year contracts. After three seasons, their team has the right to add a fifth year for a cost-controlled raise. The exact dollar figures for the fifth-year option are determined by the rookie-wage scale. Players drafted in the top 10 receive the average salary of the 10 highest-paid players at their position, while players drafted from the 11th to 32nd pick receive the average salary of the third- to the 25th-highest paid players at their position. The deadline for teams to decide on the options from the 2015 draft was last week, and by looking at which teams exercised fifth-year options on their former first-rounders, we get something better than draft grades—self-evaluations.

First, an example of a fifth-year option might be helpful. Here’s a breakdown of the four-year, $10.14 million deal Aaron Donald signed after being drafted 13th overall in 2014.

Signing Bonus: $5.69 million
2014 Salary: $420,000
2015 Salary: $880,750
2016 Salary: $1.34 million
2017 Salary: $1.8 million
2018 Salary (fifth-year team option): $6.89 million


Last year, the Rams exercised Donald’s fifth-year option for the 2018 season. The option is worth more than triple his 2017 salary, but he’s still earning far below his worth as the reigning Defensive Player of the Year. The fifth-year option is a way for teams to squeeze an extra year of productivity out of young players.

If first-rounders perform anywhere close to what teams expected on draft day, it usually makes sense for teams to pick up that extra year. So without further ado, let’s look at how teams evaluated their own performance in the 2015 draft.

Los Angeles Rams
Todd Gurley, no. 10 overall ( $9.63 million option exercised)
Self-Evaluation: A

The Rams drafted Todd Gurley 10th overall in 2015, and since then he’s third in the league in yards from scrimmage and is tied for the league lead in touchdowns as he’s blossomed into one of the few genuinely game-breaking players in football. So, decent pick. Signing him to a long-term contract might be complicated by the looming megadeal for Aaron Donald and the eventual extension for Jared Goff, so the Rams may play a game of cat and mouse with him not unlike the Steelers’ perpetual game of franchise tag with Le’Veon Bell. Those are the kind of problems teams have when they pick the best player in the draft.