The fifth-year option stinks, but first-round picks are stuck with it

Every May, most teams must decide whether to exercise the fifth-year option on one or more first-round draft picks from three years earlier. If exercised, the team delays the player's opportunity to hit the open market by another year.

For players drafted in every other round, there's no way to delay the player's first crack at free agency. Yes, the franchise tag is available. It's also available for the players who have their fifth-year option exercised, too. Which delays their chance to get fair market value by up to six years. Seven, if tagged a second time.

It hurts the best players. Some will insist they are well compensated for that fifth year. In most cases, it's true. In all cases, it's less than what they'd get if they could become free agents after four years or, more appropriately, if they were offered fair multi-year extensions instead.

The rookie wage scale, adopted in 2011, was intended primarily to ensure that players taken high in the draft don't receive massive contracts that they fail to earn. The league sold this point to the NFL Players Association by explaining that every high-profile bust removes money from the system that could otherwise go to those who deserve it.

That's right, but most teams use the fifth-year option as a way to further delay the kind of contract that the first-round picks have earned, through three years of solid performance.

Some teams (like the Texans this year with cornerback Derek Stingley Jr.) move quickly to reward thriving first-round picks, signing them promptly after their third regular season has concluded. Others (like the Cowboys with CeeDee Lamb and Micah Parsons and now Tyler Smith) drag their feet, forcing the player to carry the injury risk for a fourth season, knowing that they have the cushion of a fifth year before the team faces the possibility of using the franchise tag or letting the player become a free agent.

The fifth-year option has been improved since it was adopted in 2011. The price for the fifth season can go up based on the player's achievements in his first three. Also, the fifth year initially was guaranteed for injury only; now, it's fully guaranteed when the option is exercised.

Still, it needs to be eliminated. That won't be easy. As concessions during collective bargaining go, it helps only some players. For players taken in rounds two through seven or not drafted at all, removing the fifth-year option doesn't help them at all.

Indirectly, it does. If more great players get to the open market, the market will go up at the positions those players play. This will help other players who use those contracts as benchmarks.

As it stands, the fifth-year option here to stay. Which makes it better for a player taken late in round one to have been taken early in round two instead.

Maybe the next step would be to give players a way not to increase the amount of the fifth-year option but a path to avoiding it altogether. For the players who were deemed to be the best of the best in a given draft class and who play that way from the start of their careers, they absolutely should have gotten the larger contract that the rookie wage scale has denied them.

Whatever the formula (three Pro Bowl berths would be the simplest), there should be something that gives a player more leverage to get the second contract he deserves, and that also makes up for the deal he was denied as part of a salary structure aimed at protecting the teams against highly-drafted players becoming busts.