The Buffalo Bills made the no-brainer decisions to exercise the fifth-year options on quarterback Josh Allen and linebacker Tremaine Edmunds, the club announced Monday.
The two staples of the Bills' starting units are now under contract through the 2022 season.
The deadline for clubs to pick up fifth-year options on 2018 first-round picks is today, May 3.
Allen's fifth-year option is worth $23.106 million. Edmunds' comes in at $12.716 million.
In an idyllic world, both options are simply placeholders for the Bills in advance of extensions down the line.
Buffalo GM Brandon Beane explained last month that carrying both Allen and Edmunds on their fifth-year options, totaling more than $35 million, isn't an ideal circumstance.
"The hard part of this year is going to be, the cap has gone down, (we) don't know exactly where it's going to be next year, probably not a huge increase," Beane said at the time. "Josh's number is in the 20s because of a Pro Bowl. Tremaine has made a couple Pro Bowls, he's pushing 13. You can't really be flexible with those cap numbers, so we got to make sure if we pick them both up that we're going to have close to 35 million space in next year's cap. It's not an ideal scenario from that to pick them both up and not extend them, so we just got to figure out how to make that work in our system. But we'll have that answer once the draft is over."
An extension for Allen has been hotly discussed this offseason, but neither side is under pressure to get a deal done soon. Most big QB deals come later in the summer months.
As we get closer to training camp, Beane could extend one or both of his 2018 first-round picks. For now, the Bills made the perfunctory move of picking up the fifth-year options ensuring both starters are officially under contract beyond this season.
