The bigger issue is what the focus of the team is. In about ninety day the Detroit Lions will face the Arizona Cardinals in their first contest of the year. Between now and then, many things need a lot of teaching, coaching, and attention to detail.
Yet, here we are talking about the subject, right? Also, odds are, you do feel strongly that Calvin should be paid or that the Lions were correct in asking for money that he never earned back. We don’t think that either party owes anything to the other, for the record.
Detroit Lions vs Snacks and Slay
Likewise, the two current players who have been advised by their agent, Drew Rosenhaus, to skip minicamp and holdout for a new deal are making the walk-up to this season about them and what they think is fair for their services. Rosenhaus is known for these kinds of pressure tactics, that’s nothing new. Let’s take a quick look at what their situations are currently.
Darius Slay is the top-paid player already at his position by 2019 cap number, according to Over the Cap. If you sort cornerbacks by contract, Slay is still averaging twelve million dollars and ranks thirteenth. There are some who believe that Slay didn’t have a good enough 2018 to warrant another extension, regardless of his salary rank.
Damon “Snacks” Harrison hasn’t even completed a full year in Detroit and is already asking for more money. In fairness, his twenty-first ranked salary (by average), according to Over the Cap, is a bargain for one of the top few defensive run stoppers in the NFL. For this year, his salary is twenty-third at seven million dollars in cap hit.
Harrison’s five-year deal started in 2016, with a total value of $46.2 million, including eight million in signing bonus and twenty-four million in guarantees. That’s an average of $9.24 million per year, in case you didn’t want to crunch those numbers.
What is important to remember about both Slay and Harrison’s contracts is what they were like when they signed the contract, though. Darius Slay’s contract made him the seventh highest paid cornerback in the entire NFL when he signed it in 2016, per the NFL’s website. His $50.2 million dollar deal for five years has $23.1 million guaranteed, too.
Again, that’s over ten million on an average year, while Harrison’s deal put him as the sixth highest paid player at his position at signing, according to CBS Sports. At this moment, since quite a few players have signed new deals since then both have slipped in terms of salary rank but making over nine million or a bit over ten million is not starving anyone.