During his podcast appearance on the Lions Collective this week, Detroit Lions general manager Brad Holmes mentioned several times the financial constraints the team faced, which caused them to sign a bunch of bargain deals in free agency this offseason. His rationale mainly centered on the fact that they’ve had so many high-priced players whom they drafted and developed that it’s left them short on funds.
“We’re trying to keep our sustainability at a good level. We’re not trying to do this one-and-done kind of thing,” Holmes said. “You can take two different approaches. You can be, let’s not extend these players and then let’s get more expensive free agents. Well, are we sure that that’s the right move? Is that going to give us the right amount of sustainability that we’re looking for? Those are the decisions that we’re always weighing.”
On the surface, that sounds like a pretty awesome problem to have. Drafting so well that you have a ton of young talent with years of productive football ahead of them is a problem at least half of the league would love to have.
But have the Lions backed themselves into a corner by being too willing and eager to extend this young talent? It’s easy to play the hindsight game, but the Alim McNeill, Derrick Barnes, and Kerby Joseph extensions all look a bit risky at this point—admittedly, two of those are due to unfortunate and unpredictable injuries.
Beyond that, the Lions have four players from the 2023 NFL Draft class that they’ve expressed an interest in extending. Does Detroit need to be more selective with those extensions?
Holmes used an interesting hypothetical during his podcast, noting that with a theoretical budget of $20 million, is it better to spend the majority of that on one game-changing player or to add a more reasonably-priced player so that they can address more needs?
“Hypothetically, say you have a $20 million budget for free agency (…), well, you can look at one guy and say, ‘Look, you can get that one player,’ and say you get that one player. That one player is $18, 19 million. Well, what else are you going to get? So then you’re trying to—well, tackle, center, defensive end, DBs you want—that stuff adds up, man,” Holmes said.
Couldn’t that same logic be used for the team’s own young players? Could the Lions find a better bargain elsewhere rather than defaulting to extending their drafted and developed talent? Wouldn’t that allow them to build out a sturdier roster from top to bottom?
Or does home-grown talent come cheaper? Is it important to reward players who are developed within the system? And isn’t it just a lot harder to acquire talent at an affordable price in free agency? We saw what the Lions were able to do by trading T.J. Hockenson prior to extending him and landing a cheaper, better option in the draft with Sam LaPorta. But has that warped Lions fans’ opinion of how easy it is to move on and upgrade star players?
On this week’s Midweek Mailbag, Erik Schlitt and I debate this nuanced discussion, break down more from Holmes’ podcast appearance, and talk about the state of the roster headed into the NFL Draft.
You can hear our entire discussion on whatever podcasting platform you prefer, or you can listen below via the embedded Spotify player:
You can also catch the video version of the podcast, which includes extra between-segments content. Technical difficulties broke it into two parts. Watch them below:
YouTube: Part 1, Part 2
Twitch: Part 1, Part 2
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