Darius Slay, Damon Harrison eyeing paydays: How far will this go?

It hasn’t been any real secret that Damon ‘Snacks’ Harrison has been interested in renegotiating his contract. His agent, Drew Rosenhaus, approached Lions general manager Bob Quinn back before the draft to discuss a new deal.

At that time Quinn told Rosenhaus that there would be time to discuss Harrison’s contract after the draft. Which was a far-sighted and sensible approach to the situation. Not being prepared for the draft is akin to not being prepared for manned flight. If you fail the draft you crash and burn your whole franchise. Meanwhile, if you ace it, your franchise improves and you draw closer to championship contention.

But now with free agency and the draft behind us, the time is right to solve this little problem of Harrison wanting to get paid.

And just for good measure, one of Rosenhaus’ other clients, Darius ‘Big Play’ Slay, also happens to want to get paid as well.

Rosenhaus is going for the daily double and the Lions are the ones expected to pay the price.

Now if we’re being honest about the situation, both Harrison and Slay are underpaid for the level at which they play. Both are considered premiere players that are the keys to making Matt Patricia’s defense work the way it’s supposed to.

Last season the addition of ‘Snacks’ was a big reason the Lions defense transformed from a catastrophe to competitive. Meanwhile, Slay’s play in the secondary just picked up where it left off in 2017 when he made the Pro Bowl.

So while Bob Quinn has added other pieces to the Lions defensive puzzle, Harrison and Slay are still two of the biggest assets that side of the ball can boast outside of newly acquired Trey Flowers.

If the Lions players that are currently participating in the mandatory minicamp are being honest, they know how important it is to have ‘Snacks’ and Slay back in the fold come training camp. Despite the fact that the company line has been they ‘can only worry about who’s in camp’.

Players understand how short their careers are and will generally back each other in the pursuit of getting whatever payday they can. But that doesn’t mean they don’t know how important Harrison and Slay are to this defense.