Philip Zaroo of Mlive.com reports that discussions between the Detroit Lions and Calvin Johnson are “progressing along,” according to Lions GM Martin Mayhew.
Detroit is trying to address Johnson’s contract in the hopes that it will free up some extra cap room that they can use to sign players like Cliff Avril, Jeff Backus and Stephen Tulloch but it would also prevent them from having to use their franchise tag on him next season.
Both sides appear to be pretty confident that a deal could be done in the not-too-distant future. Johnson’s agent Bus Cook was asked about a realistic time frame that a deal could be done by.
“I don’t know,” Cook said. “That depends on the team, where they stand with their cap in two weeks and what they want to do and how they want to structure things. We’ll just see what happens.”
It’s to Detroit advantage to get something done before the start of the season so talks could progress even further in the coming weeks as the start of free agency nears.
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