Being an NFL general manager is not for the faint of heart.
Having to manage over $300 million in cap space with several stars - and borderline superstars - on your roster is tough, and making decisions about which players to prioritize keeping on your roster as a result of that cap hit is even tougher. It's a situation that general manager Brad Holmes likely wants to avoid dealing with this upcoming offseason.
With free agency set to kick off in a little over a month, Holmes has to figure out what to do about the Detroit Lions' current cap situation. They're in the red to the tune of $8.5 million headed into 2026, so some adjustments have to be made to remain competitive in free agency.
One Lions analyst's solution to this is pretty neat, though: adjust Amon-Ra St. Brown's and Jared Goff's lofty deals, and cut Graham Glasgow, to create over $40 million in cap space.
Lions analyst offers 3 moves that opens the door wide open for huge free agency
In the clip, the Bleacher Report analyst gives three moves for the Lions that would open up that cap space: restructuring St. Brown's deal which would bring his cap hit down from $33.1 million to just $11.5 million, cutting Glasgow before June 1 to save $5.56 million with just a $2.8 million dead cap hit, and restructuring Goff's contract to drop the hit from $69 million to just $47 million.
The key to these moves lies with the St. Brown and Goff restructurings, where the Lions in this scenario would be tossing remaining money left on St. Brown's current deal into a new extension down the road. That'd make the future cap hit a lot less volatile for the Lions, especially since it's safe to assume St. Brown will be a Lion for a long, long time.
As for Goff, this hypothetical only accounts for $30 million getting restructured as opposed to the maximum amount getting the same treatment for St. Brown's deal.
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It'd add $7.5 million to the remaining years on Goff's contract. He'll be 34 by the end of his current contract, so Detroit could probably negotiate something a bit more team-friendly by then depending on how 2026, 2027, and 2028 go for him and the the Lions.
Glasgow is just a toss-in here, since the Lions are probably going to be looking to the draft for another guard and will probably be using free agency or the trade market to see out a starting center for 2026.
This is a really creative means of opening the floodgates for Holmes, especially considering how loyal both Goff and St. Brown are to the team. Both likely want to see the front office do whatever it takes to make this roster competitive again, and the team wouldn't be risking anything by restructuring these deals as opposed to, for example, Alim McNeill's contract.