Reading the tea leaves on whether the Lions are preparing to make a big move soon

There’s some belief out there that the Detroit Lions are prepping for a big move, but that’s not what the tea leaves say

Mike Payton — Detroit Lions Beat Writer
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The Detroit Lions have been very active during free agency, believe it or not. They’ve signed 10 new players to their roster, and they’ve upgraded with all of them and did it at a great value.

If there is one thing that this off-season has cemented more than ever before, it’s that the Lions are just never going to be that team that makes big blockbuster moves. I know you hate it, but it’s just not what Brad Holmes is going to do. He’s going to build through the draft and supplement with good players who come at a value. It just is what it is. This should probably be the way Lions fans look at things going forward.

That’s why it’s interesting to still see local radio stations and fans still holding onto the belief that the Lions are gearing up to have big time move, and they point to the amount of money that the Lions still have at this time.

The Lions don’t have the kind of money you think they do

Right now, if you go to Spotrac or Over the Cap, you’ll see that the Lions have $26,211,356 in available cap space. That number is lying to you. For starters, you can maybe take $10 million off of that because the Lions and all 31 other teams have to have money to pay their draft picks, and all teams like to have money to bring into the season for in-season transactions.

On top of that, the Lions have been big on rolling over cap into the next off-season. They rolled over $19 million from last year into this year. That was sixth in the league. They rolled over $23 million from 2024 to 2025. That was fifth. The Lions are just one of the teams that like to do this.

That doesn’t mean that they are guaranteed to do it. They had the 22nd most from 2023 to 2024. But you have to consider that they would go this route based on the last two years.

So with all of that said, the Lions probably aren’t shaping up for some secret blockbuster trade for a Pro Bowl edge rusher or something like that. Maybe they make one more somewhat big move where they find another edge they can pay $6-10 million for a year, but it’s hard to see anything bigger than that happening.

That doesn’t mean they won’t do something crazy like trade up in the draft to get the best edge or the best tackle off the board. The Lions have done it before, and that’s typically where Holmes tends to be the most aggressive. So we’ll see what happens in the next month.

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