NFL analyst believes the Lions have one of the most overpaid players in the league on their roster

I have to be honest, when you cover exactly one NFL team, you're kind of in this ecosystem where you watch a player over and over again, and you're in the headspace that tells you that even people outside of this ecosystem realize how good a player is. That's not actually the case, and I'm reminded of that every now and again. Like, it's still weird to me that people are clinging to their old Jared Goff takes for dear life. But it is somewhat expected for the quarterback. What I didn't expect was that there were people who thought Alim McNeill was bad.

On top of that, I didn't expect anyone to call him overpaid. But that's what Brad Gagnon of Bleacher Report is saying this week. He put together his NFL All-Overpaid team on Monday, and he has McNeill as the most overpaid defensive tackle in the game on that list. Here's what he had to say:

"The good news is McNeill's 2024 contract extension won't kick in until after a 2025 campaign in which he costs the Lions just $6.1 million. The bad news is he'll count nearly $29 million against the cap in 2026 alone, and that'll only rise in 2027 and 2028. 

At 25, he has little time to bolster his game, especially as he's still recovering from a major knee injury that could limit him this season. And prior to that, he was a zero-time Pro Bowler with 11.5 sacks and two forced fumbles in his four-year career. 

That just doesn't cut it for a guy who is earning the league's fifth-highest salary at his position."

There's a lot to unpack here. For starters, McNeill is the fifth-highest-paid defensive tackle in the league right now, and I have to say that when you look at the guys above him, there were some much bigger candidates for most overpaid. Notably, there's Milton Williams at two. We're talking about a guy who essentially had one good game and then parlayed that into a giant contract.

Williams had 40 pressures and six sacks in 17 games last year. That's not bad, but 40 pressures put him at 19th among defensive tackles, and the six sacks were at 17th. McNeill had 45 pressures and four sacks in 14 games. From an analytical side, he also had a much higher Pro Football Focus grade with a 79.6 vs Williams' 70.1. Williams is also older than McNeill, who is still just 25 years old and just turned 25. So I don't know how he "has little time to bolster his game."

Plus, he's widely regarded as one of the best young defensive linemen in the game. Is he at Pro Bowl or All-Pro level? Maybe not the latter, but Williams hasn't done that either. He also hasn't been a Pro Bowler. Plus, it's hard to say that McNeill wasn't having a Pro Bowl-level season last year before he tore his ACL.

When he went down with his injury, he was having a better season than Vita Vea, who got one of those Pro Bowl spots. Who's to say that if McNeill finishes out the season, he doesn't get that spot?

At the end of the day, McNeill is a very important part of the Lions' roster, and they're going to be very excited to have him back. Can he get better? Of course, he can. But that doesn't mean the Lions overpaid him.