Kansas City Chiefs exercise Patrick Mahomes' fifth-year option

The Kansas City Chiefs have exercised their fifth-year contract option on quarterback Patrick Mahomes. So, what exactly does that mean?

The Kansas City Chiefs have extended the contract of Patrick Mahomes.

...Kind of.

Thursday morning, Ian Rapoport reported that the Chiefs exercised their fifth-year option on Mahomes' rookie contract. 

The #Chiefs have exercised the fifth-year option for star QB Patrick Mahomes, source said. Now under contract through 2021... and the team hopes for much longer. The biggest no-brainer imaginable.

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) April 30, 2020

So, what exactly does that mean? Well, in the short-term, it means that Mahomes will be a member of the Chiefs through 2021. The fifth-year option can be an indicator of how a team feels about a former first-round draft pick, as the Chicago Bears are currently weighing if they will choose to exercise Mitchell Trubisky's fifth-year option by Monday, May 4. For Mahomes and the Chiefs, it's a no-brainer.

The fifth-year option is a team-option for a first-round draft pick that can be elected in the offseason before a player's fourth year. 

For a quick look at the math of a fifth-year option, here's Bleacher Report's Brent Sobleski:

For top-10 picks, the fifth-year option is equal to the salary of the league's transition tender during the player's fourth season. The number is based on the 10 highest salaries at the player's respective position during the previous season. Beyond the initial 10 selections, the fifth-year option is the average of the third- to 25th-highest-paid players at the same position.

So, as things would currently stand in the 2021 season, Mahomes would still make a significant amount of money in his fifth year, making the average of those top-10 quarterback salaries from the year prior. However, Chiefs GM Brett Veach has had no hesitation to say the Chiefs are interested in locking up Mahomes far beyond 2021.

Veach discussed the fifth-year option and the plans for the future with Mahomes with reporters on April 16.

"Again, Pat is a priority, the way we look at it now with all that is going on, we’re going to have a lot of time to work with, Veach said. "Again, Pat, his agents Chris and Leigh Steinberg, they know that Pat is a priority, Pat isn’t going anywhere, he’s going to be here a long time. I can never sit here and speak in definitives, so I can’t say that the fifth-year won’t be an option or anything like that. It would be hard for me to see that we’d have to use that. We feel that it’s a priority when you have a great player, and that great player is a priority, things get done. It’s just hard to put a timetable on exactly when and how that will all work out. But we know and I’m sure he knows that it will get done and it will be taken care of.”

It's important to note that the fifth-year option does not in any way limit the Chiefs' options in terms of a long-term extension. Essentially, this is a procedural move that the Chiefs had absolutely no reason not to use. Mahomes will likely never play under that fifth-year option price tag, but if anything goes awry — from an injury to a seemingly unlikely contract dispute or anything in-between — the Chiefs won't be up against a Mahomes deadline after the 2020 season.

Veach's comments about not having to use the fifth-year option seem to be more about it being "used" in the very active sense — Mahomes having to play under it for the 2021 season — not that the Chiefs would have had any reason not to exercise the option now. Veach knows that Mahomes and the Chiefs both likely plan on disregarding the 2021 option for the sake of a massive, multi-year, record-breaking extension coming sometime within the next year, if not before the 2020 season even kicks off.