No UFA shall qualify as a CFA unless and until the maximum possible term of the player’s contract (“Maximum Possible Term”) has expired, and all other requirements have been satisfied. The Maximum Possible Term of any Player Contract shall be determined as of the date of such contract’s execution and shall include all years of the contract (including, without limitation, option years and voidable years).

This is buried deep in the rules of the latest CBA. When you decline a fifth-year option, you don’t get a comp pick for losing that player in free agency.

If we’d kept Young, franchise tagged him, and then lost him in free agency the following year, he WOULD become a CFA again, and we’d get a 2025 comp pick. If he played enough. San Francisco could do the same, but they’re not getting a 2024 pick for losing him, no matter what Adam Schefter says.

So now the trades make more sense to me. However, the decision to decline the fifth-year option in the first place makes way less sense. If we’d executed it, and then put him up for trade yesterday, we might have gotten a better return.