It happened in a little bit of a different way than it does a lot of other places—where a quarterback comes off a rookie deal, and a team is dealing with a massive jump at the most expensive position in the sport. But with the combination of Jared Goff’s numbers doubling (he made a touch under $26 million per year over his first three seasons in Detroit), Penei Sewell coming off a top-end rookie deal and Amon-Ra St. Brown coming off a Day 3 rookie deal, Detroit is there.
This Dom Perignon of a champagne problem will only metastasize going forward. Aidan Hutchinson is eligible for a new deal next year, the bumper 2023 draft crop the year after.
That said, doing the deals early helps to manage the cap crunch. Sewell and St. Brown’s cap numbers are manageable until 2026, when they jump to $28 million and $33.1 million, respectively. That year is also when Goff’s cap numbers balloon, with a figure of nearly $70 million slotted into that season.
And a situation such as this is the kind of reality that Lions GM Brad Holmes lived in for all of those years he worked in Los Angeles. With the Rams’ top-heavy cap table weighed down by franchise cornerstones such as Aaron Donald, Jalen Ramsey, Cooper Kupp and, at the time, Goff, GM Les Snead and Holmes’s college scouting department had to be on point in the draft—and even more so with all of the premium draft picks offloaded to acquire guys such as Ramsey.
Therein lied an underrated key to the Rams’ build. Landing eventual starters such as Brian Allen, Joe Noteboom, John Johnson III, Tyler Higbee, Sebastian Joseph-Day, David Long Jr., Greg Gaines, David Edwards, Nick Scott, Cam Akers and Jordan Fuller gave the Rams a steady stream of contributors making next to nothing, which freed up money to spend aggressively on the top of the roster.
It'll also be a key for Holmes’s Lions now and moving forward. Because paying a quarterback, a left tackle, a receiver and a pass rusher might mean having to start a guy on a rookie deal at guard or safety or nose tackle. With the good news for Detroit being, again, that Holmes has been there before.
