Dave Brikett of the Detroit Free Press writes that the Lions “won’t have much cap room” during free agency which could create an issue for some of the roster moves that they would like to make.
Brikett mentions that QB Matthew Stafford, S Louis Delmas and RT Gosder Cherilus are all in line for raises because of contract bonuses that were triggered.
Cliff Avril, Jeff Backus, Stephen Tulloch and Eric Wright are all free agents which creates an issue for the Lions. Offensive tackle and cornerback are both huge concerns that will require money to fix unless they’re able to address them in the draft. Avril and Tulloch will draw plenty of interest on the open market so the Lions will have either use their franchise tag on one of them or match any offers received.
Considering that the Lions have already invested a ton of money in their offensive, allowing Avril to leave could help them address a number of positions without over leveraging their financial commitments.
“Here’s my analogy with the salary cap,” said Lions president Tom Lewand said. “If somebody looks at a movie still and tries to tell you about the entire movie, you’re not going to get it. If they watch the trailer so you’ve got a little bit more information about the cap – you watch the trailer and you try and tell me if it was a good movie or not, you may have a little bit more to go on. But until you’ve seen the whole movie, you don’t know. And we’re the only ones who’ve seen the whole movie.”
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