The day before the NFL Draft in Detroit, the Lions signed wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown and offensive tackle Penei Sewell to big contract extensions. Then, in the gap week between rookie minicamp and the next phase of OTAs, quarterback Jared Goff got his big contract extension.
The core of Brad Holmes' roster building plan is develop then reward the Lions' own players. They team will willingly pay the financial piper for their core players who prove worthy of such investments, and more of those looming pay days are coming as Holmes hits the mark in the draft over and over again. And not everyone was or will be pretty much instantly good like St. Brown and Sewell were as rookies in 2021.
It's worth looking at who might be next up for a contract extension from the Lions. Presented somewhat chronologically, but also with an eye on who will be prioritized, here are five players who are next up for a contract extension.
5 Detroit Lions players who are next in line for a contract extension
5. S Ifeatu Melifonwu
Injuries have been a definite thing for Melifonwu over his first three NFL season, including a hand issue that limited him to strictly special teams duty for a stretch last season. But once he was healthy enough to replace Tracy Walker in the starting lineup, from there (Week 14) through the Divisional Round of the playoffs he was Pro Football Focus' seventh-highest graded safety (80.3 overall grade). From Week 14-the NFC Championship Game, he had five sacks, 42 total tackles, four tackles for loss, two interceptions, seven pass breakups, eight quarterback hits and a 79.1 overall grade from Pro Football Focus.
Melifonwu is entering the final year of his rookie contract. If he can do what he did late last season over the course of a full, healthy season this year, or even somewhere close to it, he'll be sticking around in Detroit for a few more years.
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.
2. DT Alim McNeill
McNeill worked hard to reshape his physique and expand his game heading into his third season, and it paid off with a breakthrough 2023 campaign. Since he missed four games with a knee injury late last season, there seems to be room for more this year. The raise in financial profile defensive tackles have seen around the league is good news for him as he looks to build on that breakthrough.
The only fly in the ointment for McNeill getting a long-term deal from the Lions is the cost if he continues to advance himself as one of the best defensive tackles in the league this year. Somewhere between $15-20 million per year is going to be the going rate if he has another good season, with the higher end or more than that in play if he improves his production (ex: double-digit sacks).
All of that cost-related stuff said, McNeill emerged as a core player last year and if he proves it wasn't a fluke the Lions should find a way to keep him around.
1. OT Taylor Decker
After last season ended, the longest-tenured player on the Lions made it absolutely clear what his future intentions are as he looked toward the final year of his contract.
I definitely want to end my career here,” Decker told MLive. “I would say ultimately, for me, this is where I want to be. Of course you want money, but for me, I like being here. I love being here. I was able to be a part of climbing out of the trenches of it, and it’s been fun the past year-and-a-half to see the flip side of it.... But ultimately, do I want to be here forever? One-hundred percent. So, we’ll see.”
In April, Decker told reporters there had been "entry level" and "base-level" discussions about a contract extension. Approaching 31 years old (August 23), he is still a top-end offensive tackle in the league (No. 9 overall grade from Pro Football Focus last year) and well worth keeping around for a few more years to shape one of the top tackle tandems in the league with Sewell.
Decker is the safest bet as the next Lions' player to get a contract extension, if only partly as a mechanism to reduce his $19.1 million cap hit for this year. It may even happen soon.
Honorable mention: LB Derrick Barnes