Certainly free agency is about guys signing with new teams, old teams and the same team as the previous season. For the Detroit Lions it hasn’t been about going crazy and spending all kinds of money on the best CB or letting the best WR in the league walk. In fact, the Lions did the opposite of that. They didn’t make a crazy offer to CB Cortland Finnegan (mainly due to cap reasons), they let CB Eric Wright sign with Tampa Bay and get overpaid. Then the Lions re-negotiated with WR Calvin Johnson and gave him an 8 year/$132 million dollar contract. More than likely, Megatron will be retiring a Lion which puts a smile on every single persons face in the city of Detroit.
Now that Megatron is re-newed and has cleared up just about $10 million dollars in cap space, the question is, what’s next? The next thing for the Lions is use that $10 million dollars in cap space and re-sign MLB Stephen Tulloch to a five or six year deal. Tulloch deserves it and is arguably the best MLB to hit the free agent market since well, last year, when he signed with the Lions. It’s been reported that Tulloch wants a deal similar to the deal that MLB D’Qwell Jackson got with the Cleveland Browns. That deal is a five-year deal worth $42.5 million dollars. Not bad considering you get a Pro Bowl caliber linebacker locked up for a couple years at that price.
After Tulloch gets signed, take that franchise tag that’s on Cliff Avril and burn it. Use it to initiate a fire on a picture of Matt Millen in a back alley on Woodward in Detroit. Pretty much what I’m saying here folks is get Cliff Avril signed to a long term deal as well. If you don’t, well then we won’t see him back here next year. There are more positives to getting Avril back long term than relying on the franchise tag. With a long term deal you get him for five or six years plus it clears up cap space. If that happens, the Lions would probably clear up about four to five million dollars in cap space. Not bad considering we started with being over $11 million in cap space.