The Super Bowl is over and done with and the NFL offseason is ready to get going. For the Detroit Lions, the biggest thing and the thing they're expected to have at the top of their list this offseason is a contract extension for Jared Goff. What is that going to cost the Lions?
If you ask every Lions fan out there, you're going to get a different answer from each one of them. Some think it should be less than Daniel Jones for some reason and some think it should be enough to make him one of the highest paid QB's in then NFL. There are some out there that think the Lions shouldn't do it at all because they need a fourth year of him being good to just finally realize that he's the Lions guy.
I've had my own projection out there. I thought after the season that he had and the Lions success, there was cause to believe that he could be bumped up to being the highest paid quarterback in the league.
This time I decided to go to the experts. We have two great cap experts on staff in Kyle DeDiminicantanio and Josh Queipo. They helped me put together a full on projection for Jared Goff's extension.
The things that helped them get to the numbers they got to were his statistics from 2022 and 2023, the Lions success in 2023 along with their playoff run, the cities love of him along with the franchises love of him and recent market trends in the NFL.
All that brought them to work up a four-year, $190 million dollar extension that would see Goff get $100 million of that guaranteed and have annual per year salary of $47.5 million.
This would keep Goff in Detroit until 2028. The Lions do have an out in this deal starting in 2027. They'd have to pay their way out of it, but they could open up $13 million in cap space that season if they decided to opt out.
The numbers above is the four extra years added to his deal. That doesn't start until 2025. Goff is still under contract in 2024. So total remaining number for Goff would be five years, 217.3 million. That would make Goff's contract the 10th most in the NFL.
The Lions get a pretty sweet deal here if you ask me. This does not make Goff the highest paid in the league, but it does make him one of the highest paid while also offering the Lions some flexibility to get things done in the next couple years.
We'll see soon enough how close this deal is to the real thing. But if the Lions got this, they're in pretty good shape.
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