The Detroit Lions have become a team built mainly through the draft, though trades and free agent signings have also played a significant role in the team's recent successes.
For teams that experience the level of success in drafting as the Lions have done, a natural part of that is signing players to contract extensions that keep them around for a long time. That on-field continuity is what sets the great teams apart from the merely good ones.
The great equalizer for top teams, though, is the salary cap. To be clear, Lions are not in any kind of New Orleans Saints-like danger right now. According to Over The Cap, Detroit currently sits at around $40M under the current cap.
But with a number of players wanting to get rewarded for their performance, there is a very real chance that star players and key depth players may begin to walk if they can't get contracts they feel they deserve. DE Za'Darius Smith is a great current example of this, as the free agent, acquired by the Lions mid-season last year, remains unsigned by the team.
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Arriving at possibly the best time possible for the organization is news that the salary cap may end up seeing a large-scale boost in the next few years. Ryan Love from USA Today's Lionswire recently reported that Nielsen is changing how it measures viewer audiences.
First, their "Out of Home" viewing measure has been overhauled to better capture true metrics - "covering 100% of the US contiguous population". Like the name suggests, this change better accounts for people who choose to go to bars, restaurants, and other venues, including in less-populated areas.
That's not all though. Live streaming tracking, as well as information from Smart TVs and satellites have also been drastically improved, with changes to the rating system being approved in November 2024, and again in January 2025.
What does this mean for the Lions? As Love mentioned in his article, the NFL is set to renegotiate its TV rights deals in 2028. If the league is able to use more complete metrics that show a greatly increased viewer count, that means the league will be able to charge enough to allow for a substantial boost to the salary cap.
Shift in viewership capture can help Lions significantly with salary cap increase
In turn, that means that some long-term contracts that are being negotiated right now, such as the Lions' DE Aidan Hutchinson, can be creatively built to take advantage of that prospective boost. Teams across the league could, theoretically, backload one or two contracts and be able to afford to sign other players to short-term contracts - players that would have to be traded or else let walk away otherwise.
For Detroit, this doesn't affect just Hutchinson or Smith. Star safeties Brian Branch, one half of arguably the top safety duo in the league right now, will command top dollar in the near future, as his counterpart Kerby Joseph already has.
An extension for WR Jameson Williams has been rumored this entire offseason. Electrifying RB Jahmyr Gibbs is also rumored to be in talks for a new contract, and LB Alex Anzalone, long acknowledged as a leader in the locker room and on the field, is in the middle of negotiations.
The Lions' GM Brad Holmes has, thus far, proven adroit at handling contracts for players. Quite a few members of the Lions got paid over the last two years, including QB Jared Goff, RT Penei Sewell, and RB David Montgomery, to name a few.
While other teams have floundered, dealing with holdouts and bitter feuds over contracts, Holmes has, quite simply, gotten the job done and kept his locker room happy...but it can't last forever. Sooner or later, someone is going to not get what they feel they deserve, and end up departing the team.
With the changes to the Nielsen ratings and the expected rise in salary cap though, the team can look forward to some much-needed breathing room, and keep the good times going longer. That could make all the difference in maintaining enough of the core of the team to greatly extend the team's aspirations to finally bring home a Super Bowl title.