Alex Anzalone’s reworked deal appears to point to the end for him and the Lions, this doesn’t feel like enough

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you know of the ongoing contract dispute between the Detroit Lions and linebacker Alex Anzalone. He’s been very vocal in the last two weeks about how he’d like a new deal and how he’d like to retire a Lion, but the two sides have just not come to […]

Mike Payton — Detroit Lions Beat Writer
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Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you know of the ongoing contract dispute between the Detroit Lions and linebacker Alex Anzalone. He’s been very vocal in the last two weeks about how he’d like a new deal and how he’d like to retire a Lion, but the two sides have just not come to an agreement.

When you take a look at Anzalone’s deal, you can understand why he’s looking for an extension. He has no guarantees left on his contract, and there’s no security on the deal either. He’s kind of hanging out in the wind.

On Thursday, it was reported that the Lions had not signed Anzalone ot a new deal, but instead re-worked his contract. What they did was add $250,ooo to his base salary of $6 million and then guaranteed everything. Then they added $750,000 to his incentives. So he essentially is given an extra million dollars.

So as things sit, he’s going to make some extra money in 2025, but that’s it for Anzalone. At this point, he is still in the last year of his deal, and the Lions don’t appear to have any future plans with him beyond this season. Maybe that changes at some point, but right now this is what he got, and it really doesn’t feel like enough.

Anzalone is coming off the best season of his career, and he has shown to be a very crucial part of this defense in 2024. When he went down in Week 12, the Lions’ defense went on a stark drop from where they had been with him. Detroit Football Network’s Justin Rogers made this really good graph that shows that drop.

When he came back in Week 18, the Lions just happened to have one of their best defensive performances of the season. So what do the Lions do without him? The obvious hope is that Jack Campbell takes the big step forward that everyone expects him to take, and then you have Derrick Barnes, who has gotten better every year. Then they have Malcolm Rodriguez, who could take another step forward when he’s back and healthy. You could see the vision as to why the Lions would maybe not want to put a lot of money into the soon-to-be 31-year-old Anzalone.

Still, it made sense to make a year-over-year type of deal with Anzalone. We projected this offseason that a fair deal would be to add one year to his deal and give him a $9 million extension with $7.5 million of that guaranteed. That’s not too outlandish. Maybe something like this happens down the road. But at this very point, the Lions appear ready to move on with the younger guys going forward after this season.

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