NFL free agency has not officially began yet. It doesn’t start until Wednesday at 4:00 PM. Even with that in mind, all the high end pass rushers and defensive linemen that were in this draft have been spoken for. They all agreed to new deals by Tuesday evening. Some stayed where they were at and some ventured off to new territories. None of them were signed by the Detroit Lions.
This upset a lot of Lions fans on social media. The Lions need to fill that spot opposite Aidan Hutchinson with a guy that can get home to the quarterback. But they were wise to not break the bank in doing so.
The Lions are a team that’s on the cusp of potentially winning it all. They’re also a team that is sticking to their principles and their plan and that’s all about building a team that can have sustained in success in a world where teams are spending ungodly amounts of money to maybe have success right now. You might hate it in the moment, but it’s been paying off this entire time. Look how the Lions were able to get to the NFC Championship game in year three of the rebuild without having to pay for a high priced free agent. That’s not easy to do, but they’re pulling it off.
It’s because they have a formula and that formula is to draft great players and then re-sign those great players to contracts when the bill is due. They simply can’t do that if they pay one of these pass rushers $90-110 million contracts like Brian Burns and Christian Wilkins got. These guys are making what used to be quarterback money out here right now.
The Lions do need to upgrade in some spots on the line and they probably will bring in some free agents once the new league year starts on Wednesday. But they’ll likely focus on the bigger acquisitions in the NFL Draft where they can get some great talent for a lot less money.
They’ll also have money for massive extensions for Jared Goff, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Penei Sewell and Aidan Hutchinson.