How the Lions’ contract lengths compare to the rest of the NFL, NFC North, and playoff teams
The Detroit Lions signed a lot of one-year deals. How does that compare with the rest of the league?
Oddly, one of the more complained-about things when it comes to the Detroit Lions’ free agency haul this offseason is about how long the terms of the deals they’ve been signing players to are.
The Lions have signed 11 new free agents this period, and 10 of them are on one-year deals. This has caused some Lions fans and local radio stations to accuse the Lions of being cheap and not wanting to spend the money they have. There’s a much bigger story at work here, and Lions GM Brad Holmes explains that.
“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.”
With all that in mind, I wanted to look over all of the data and compile the term lengths of all 32 teams to see where the Lions fall on one-year deals and multi-year deals for new free agent signings with the rest of the league. What I found was that of the 242 free agents signed, 139 of them were on one-year deals.
How the Lions’ one-year deals stack up against the entire league
| Team | One-Year Deals |
| Dolphins | 16 |
| Falcons | 11 |
| Lions | 10 |
| Cardinals | 9 |
| Giants | 9 |
| Eagles | 8 |
| Colts | 7 |
| Cowboys | 6 |
| Commanders | 6 |
| Panthers | 5 |
| Bears | 5 |
| Patriots | 5 |
| 49ers | 5 |
| Titans | 5 |
| Buccaneers | 4 |
| Ravens | 3 |
| Bills | 3 |
| Raiders | 3 |
| Seahawks | 3 |
| Browns | 2 |
| Texans | 2 |
| Chiefs | 2 |
| Jets | 2 |
| Steelers | 2 |
| Vikings | 2 |
| Bengals | 1 |
| Broncos | 1 |
| Chargers | 1 |
| Saints | 1 |
| Packers | 0 |
| Jaguars | 0 |
| Rams | 0 |
The Lions had the third-most one-year deals in the league. So they definitely are up there. But you can really see from the table that this isn’t something only the Lions did a lot of. A bunch of teams were operating this way. Crazy that the Dolphins had 16 of them. But that’s what happens when you have almost $180 million in dead cap because you had to completely reset your football team.
Lions vs playoff teams with one-year deals
| Team | One-Year Deals |
| Lions | 10 |
| Eagles | 8 |
| Panthers | 5 |
| Bears | 5 |
| Patriots | 5 |
| 49ers | 5 |
| Bills | 3 |
| Seahawks | 3 |
| Texans | 2 |
| Steelers | 2 |
| Chargers | 1 |
| Rams | 0 |
| Packers | 0 |
Lions still have the most, but almost all of these teams had more money to spend, and there’s a reason for that, but we’ll get to that later. But it really makes sense that the Eagles and Lions are doing things the same way because they’ve been doing that for a while. The Eagles are all about draft and retain, just like Detroit is. They’re just a little more willing to be aggressive at the trade deadline. Even though it rarely works out for them.
Lions vs NFC North on one-year deals
| Team | One-Year Deals |
| Lions | 10 |
| Bears | 5 |
| Vikings | 2 |
| Packers | 0 |
The Packers doing no one-year deals is crazy to me, but once we get into the multi-year part of that story, you’ll see they didn’t do much there either. The Bears didn’t do a lot in free agency, but they did sign these five players to one-year deals. That’s more than the multi-year deals they did.
How the Lions stack up to the rest of the league on multi-year deals
| Team | Multi-Year Deals |
| Titans | 11 |
| Cardinals | 6 |
| Texans | 6 |
| Raiders | 6 |
| Commanders | 6 |
| Chargers | 5 |
| Patriots | 5 |
| Saints | 5 |
| Giants | 5 |
| Falcons | 3 |
| Ravens | 3 |
| Bills | 3 |
| Panthers | 3 |
| Bears | 3 |
| Bengals | 3 |
| Browns | 3 |
| Colts | 3 |
| Chiefs | 3 |
| Rams | 3 |
| Steelers | 3 |
| 49ers | 3 |
| Packers | 2 |
| Jets | 2 |
| Buccaneers | 2 |
| Cowboys | 1 |
| Lions | 1 |
| Jaguars | 1 |
| Dolphins | 1 |
| Vikings | 1 |
| Eagles | 1 |
| Broncos | 0 |
| Seahawks | 0 |
So, let’s really break this down with the teams that were able to do a lot of multi-year deals. There’s a very clear reason for that. They have quarterbacks on rookie deals, or they’re about to have a rookie quarterback on a rookie deal. There is just so much more flexibility when you’re not paying that high quarterback deal.
Now, two things here. Those teams are going to join the party the Lions, and so many other teams are at very soon, and you’ll see how that affects their spending. The other thing is that this is not an invitation for the Lions to join the other party, where they get the rookie quarterback and spend all the money. Because that is like five times harder than the situation they’re in now. There’s a reason you keep seeing the same group of teams in the top 10 of the draft every year. They can’t find the quarterback.
The Lions are also being punished by themselves for being too good at drafting. They have to extend four players from the 2023 NFL Draft, and those four guys are expected to get market-setting deals. So, as Holmes said at the top, that creates constraints. The Lions have to do what they can, and that is one-year deals.
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