Ever since the 2011 collective bargaining agreement, drafted NFL players have received four-year contracts. The contracts for first-round picks, however, include team options for a fifth year. The team has to exercise that contract option by May 3 of the contract's fourth year, which is why you saw a bunch of headlines on Monday about players who were drafted in 2018.
If you follow the NFL closely, you're used to this. This is, after all, the eighth draft class to which this has applied. But since not everyone does follow that closely, and because the new CBA the players and teams agreed to in March 2020 made a couple of key changes to the fifth-year option process, we thought we'd hit you with a short explainer on what this is all about.