Why the Detroit Lions should not re-sign tackle Taylor Decker

The Detroit Lions have a big decision to make on tackle Taylor Decker’s future going into the last year of his contract. Don’t extend him, here’s why.

Good day, Detroit Lions fans. In today’s installment we’ll tackle the subject of tackles! Taylor Decker going into his fifth year as the left tackle of the  Lions and mentions of his pending contract negotiations have us wondering what he will ask to be paid.

Let’s just suppose that the Lions say “no” to signing Decker to a huge deal this summer and making him potentially the third $20 million-dollar-man on the offense.

Matthew Stafford is currently set to earn $21.3 million in 2020 salary due to the restructuring of his deal, which pushed some money down the road to give the Lions some wiggle room for other signings like Decker and wide receiver Kenny Golladay, whose contract we wrote about earlier in the offseason. However, Stafford’s average salary is still $27 million so you don’t have to worry about him finding a new house, all numbers from Spotrac’s website.

Golladay is also likely to ask for big money, something near Amari Cooper’s huge deal for $100 million over five years, averaging $20 million per year. Perhaps Golladay won’t get that much but it seems unlikely that he will settle for less than $17-$18 million plus guarantees, on the low end.

Why the discrepancy between wanting to extend Golladay versus not extending Decker?

Skilled position players like quarterbacks and some receivers are just too difficult to replace from an individual playmaking standpoint. You can hide a less talented lineman in with his four buddies better than you can hide an inadequate receiver or quarterback; this is how Cleveland Browns tackle Greg Robinson has stayed in the NFL prior to his arrest for allegedly possessing 157 pounds of weed in a rented Chevy Tahoe.

He did only give up 6.0 sacks last year. How did we forget about him getting busted, though? We’ve been busy and distracted, apparently.

Back to the topic.

Another point is that those kinds of huge salaries should only be for the Pro-Bowl, All-Pro type players and Quinn has already spent on Stafford while Golladay has recently proven to be a top option, making the Pro-Bowl in 2019 after having third-string quarterbacks throwing to him for eight games.