As he now moves toward his 10th season, left tackle Taylor Decker is the longest-tenured Detroit Lion. A three-year contract extension last offseason was a big step toward him spending his entire career with the Lions, and he has long been one of the most underrated left tackles in the NFL.
When the Lions were in a far different place than they are now, in the first year of the Brad Holmes-Dan Campbell regime, the idea of trading Decker was kind of out there. He made his feelings about that very clear, and as it turned out he was viewed (rightfully so) as a core player.
As good as Decker is, the reality is he's getting older (32 before the 2025 season starts) and he has missed time in three of the last four seasons. Holmes has made it clear that keeping the offensive line one of the best in the league is a top priority, so a succession plan for older guys is somewhere on the radar.
NFL analyst thinks Lions might trade Taylor Decker without a viable immediate plan to replace him
Heading into last year's draft, an analyst used a mock draft to put some out of nowhere "buzz" the Lions could be looking to replace Decker out there. As in, drafting his replacement and trading him. It was very little ado about ultimately nothing, as expected.
On Thursday's episode of "The Athletic Football Show", previewing the offensive side of the ball in free agency, Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen talked about trades that could happen. Mays mentioned Decker as someone teams in need of a left tackle should have interest in.
"Another guy I'd mentioned with Kansas City and just teams that need a left tackle in general, I'd sniff around Taylor Decker if I were one of these teams as a trade candidate. Yeah, he's getting a little older. This team has spent big on a lot of extensions. Recently, they traded up for that fourth round developmental left tackle last year, Manu, so they've got some guys potentially in the pipeline. It might be a little bit quick for that, because I think he was really a developmental player when they traded for him."
"But that's a call I would make if I was a team that needed a left tackle here, and I swung and missed on Ronnie Stanley, just because it feels like there's going to be a moment where they might have to move on from Decker, given the price tag and given his age, with all the other things that they're having to spend money on here over the next couple years. They would save 22 million against the cap next year, for 2026, if they traded Taylor Decker now. So it's just, it's a phone call I would make if I was one of these teams."
The reviews of Giovanni Manu's development as a rookie last season have been good, as he had the "redshirt year" he was expected to have coming out of a Canadian college. Going from that to being Jared Goff's blindside protector next season would be a quite a step, and a pre-emptive one that doesn't seem to be part of the Lions' offseason plan.
Mays also had the salary cap implications wrong. According to Over The Cap, the Lions would clear at most $18.2 million in 2026 cap space by trading Decker (a post-June 1 trade), with the prorated portion of his signing bonus ($3.148 million) left behind as dead money.
Decker feels like an untradeable player for the Lions. At minimum, he is untradeable without a viable plan to replace/succeed him. Manu is not a viable plan to take over at left tackle next season.
Unless a better immediate plan to replace Decker is revealed, teams can call about him all they want. They should easily be told he's not available right now.
