The Cincinnati Bengals have declined to exercise the fifth-year option of Myles Murphy, according to ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler, who adds that the team still has interest in signing Murphy to a long-term extension.
The deadline to exercise the option is May 1.
Murphy, the Bengals’ first-round pick in the 2023 NFL Draft (28th overall), is now entering the final year of his rookie contract. While the assumption had been that the team would ultimately exercise the option, Bengals director of player personnel Duke Tobin cast doubt on that during his post-draft press conference.
“That’s coming up this week,” Tobin said of the deadline to pick up Murphy’s option. “And now that the draft’s over, we’ll look and see what kind of costs we can layer in next year and what we can and can’t do there. It’ll be a financial decision, primarily, one way or the other, but he is a guy that we’re counting on, not only this year, but we’d like a long-term relationship with him, but I don’t know whether that comes together.”
While Murphy is an ascending player who’s coming off his best year as a pro, the problem is that the option will cost the Bengals $14.475 million dollars in 2027. That’s a very large, fully guaranteed cap hit for a team that’s already got a lot of money on the payroll for next year, and that’s before potential extensions with Chase Brown, DJ Turner, and Dax Hill.
It sounds like the Bengals will consider signing Murphy to a long-term extension, but there’s now a very real chance that this will be the last year for him in the Queen City.
