Brad Holmes explains why the Lions stuck to giving out mostly one-year contracts

The Lions have bills to pay, but they’re still spending all their fun money

Mike Payton — Detroit Lions Beat Writer
Add as preferred source on Google
Kimberly P. Mitchell / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The Detroit Lions signed 11 new players in free agency, and with the exception of just one, Cade Mays, the Lions signed all of these players to one-year deals.

What that signaled to fans was three things. These players are either on prove-it deals, they’re players teams didn’t want, or the Lions are just cheaping out. That’s not really the case, though. The majority of free agents who signed a contract this year signed one-year deals. Even some of the bigger-name players signed for just one year.

But why? Well, Lions GM Brad Holmes spoke to Lions Collective on Tuesday and answered the question.

Brad Holmes explains why the Lions primarily signed players to one-year deals

“We knew what kind of financial constraints that we were in entering this (free agency), and it had to take a lot more looking at everybody from top to bottom. When you have more money to spend and lesser constraints financially, you can do a lot more focus on just the mid to upper echelon guys.” Holmes said. “But when we’re looking at the constraints that we have financially, entering in, it’s like, ‘okay, all right,’ we’re not going to be able to do a lot of multi year deals, because for what we’re trying to do with these extensions that we have upcoming, the implications that it would have on our cap would be, I don’t want to call it crippling, but it would have been hard to overcome.”

Holmes also added that the Lions can still do some multi-year deals, but they’re limited in the amount they can do. But the financial constraints of the future make it hard to think about right now.

What people will often see is that Spotrac and Over The Cap will explain how much money the Lions have, and when you don’t see them spending it, you think they’re being cheap. But you really have to look at it like you do with your bills. Just because you have money, that doesn’t mean you no longer have bills. You have to budget for the bills first.

The Lions are doing their budgeting for the bills that are Jahmyr Gibbs, Sam LaPorta, Jack Campbell, and Brian Branch. Those extensions are due right now, and these players aren’t going to just say they don’t want them anymore, so the team can go get a free agent. So when you get your check, and it looks like you have $2,000, you really only have $500. With that in mind, Holmes says he’s spending that $500.

“I don’t want you guys to ever think that, or anybody to ever think that we have a lot of money, that we have it, we don’t want to spend it, spending everything that we have available to us, you know what I mean. And so that’s, that’s what I wanted to kind of make clear.”

So there you go. The Lions want to save their money to pay All-Pro players. It’s not a bad strategy.

Related Articles