Mike Florio and Chris Simms unpack the report that the Commanders won’t exercise Chase Young’s fifth-year option and discuss how injury concern was a factor.

Video Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

- A quick break from the draft to talk about the aftermath of the draft from three years ago for the first round selections. The deadline for exercising the fifth-year option arrives on May 2. The big news reportedly, the Washington Commanders will not pick up the option on Chase Young. He was the Defensive Rookie of the Year. Everything was pointing up. Tore an ACL November of 2021, was not healthy until late in the '22 season.

They are doing the Daniel Jones, Josh Jacobs bet here. They are not picking up the option. And when you look at the fact that it's fully-guaranteed, it's about $17 million, I think it's a risk-- it's less of a risk than the Giants took that maybe we'll have to use the franchise tag in '24. And if we do, we'll call it a good problem to have.

They didn't want to put that $17 million out there fully-guaranteed. It used to be injury guaranteed only until the league year began when that option would have applied. Now, it's fully-guaranteed from the moment you exercise it, and I think we see teams being a little more leery about doing so if there's any doubt whatsoever.

- Yeah, leery. You said it, the injury concern. That's certainly real. We haven't seen anything close to top tier pass rusher. Even the rookie year, it was a good year, but there were signs then of like, ooh wait, maybe he's not as a great of a pass rusher as we all thought coming out of the draft in that process.

And too, hey, think about Washington. I mean, damn, you know, you're going to give-- just in a broad statement here, and Chase Young is a very good player, I know that, when he's healthy, right? But at a very broad statement, you can sit there and go, wait, they're going to have fifth year option the fourth best D-lineman on their team, right?

Like, Jonathan Allen, huge contract. Daron Payne, huge contract. Montez Sweat, the other defensive end's definitely a better pass rusher than Chase Young is right now. So yes, I think, hopefully, he can respect where they are at in this, and wanting to see a little bit more, and see him be healthy and regain the form that he was at his rookie year.