5 Detroit Lions players who are next up for a contract extension

4. DE Aidan Hutchinson

Hutchinson is not eligible for a contract extension until after the coming season, his third in the league. And the Lions do have the luxury of a fifth-year option to kick the extension can down the road just a bit. But they had the same luxury with Sewell, and they didn't fool around, exercising his fifth-year option and giving him a massive contract extension in one fair swoop.

On the current track he's on, Hutchinson will have a case to become the league's highest-paid edge rusher when it comes time to negotiate a new deal. But that will not prevent the Lions from keeping one of their core players around for a long time to come.

3. CB Carlton Davis

As a possible pre-cursor to a contract extension, the Lions restructured the final year of Davis' current contract after acquiring him from the Buccaneers this offseason. That gave him some more cash up front, via converting nearly half of his original $14 million base salary into a signing bonus

Davis is a very capable man-coverage corner, which seems to make him an ideal fit for what the Lions want to be defensively. He'll have to show himself as that on the field, but an in-season contract extension seems possible and Davis has been open to a longer stay from the moment he arrived in Detroit.