The Detroit Lions’ best and worst contracts going into the 2026 season
Detroit Lions’ best and worst contracts heading into 2026. From a massive team-friendly extension to a roster where “worst deal” is hard to even define, Detroit’s cap situation says a lot about how this roster was built.
We’re going into mandatory minicamp time for the Detroit Lions, but after that, it’s a straight shot through the gates of hell, and we’ll go about seven circles deep before coming back up in late July for training camp. So get ready to see a lot of articles like “The worst contracts in the NFL right now.”
Actually, we saw that on Sunday night; it really inspired today’s article on the Lions’ contract situations. It made us wonder not only what the worst contract is for the Lions, but also the best one, too. Let’s talk about it.
Best contract: Jack Campbell
This is such a team-friendly deal for the Lions. Campbell is one of the tippy-top linebackers in the league, and he gave a hometown discount to Detroit. Not only did he say he didn’t need to be the highest paid in the NFL, but the cap hits that he took are super low and allow the Lions to still sign other players and get other guys set up on extensions. It’s a pretty sweet deal. Plus, it opens the door well for a restructuring in a couple of years.
Worst contract: Do the Lions really have one?
OK, I know what you’re going to say. You might bring up Alim McNeill or Kerby Joseph. Two players who got big deals and then had injuries. The thing is, even though those deals are big, they were actually pretty good deals when they got done.
From there, both players very well could return to the players we all know them as. But even if they don’t, the Lions have a built-in out after the 2026 season for McNeill because they front-loaded the dead money.
Joseph’s deal is not as generous in that regard, but the cap hits are very low for Detroit until they get into a spot where they could move on if they wanted to after the 2027 season. Obviously, if Joseph can’t play or struggles, that is going to be unfortunate for how the deal looks. So that makes it the closest to a bad deal.
Outside of those two, the Lions have been pretty good about how they’ve done their deals. There are no Albert Haynesworth-type deals in Detroit at this time.
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