As all Detroit Lions fans know, the team is chock full of young talent that are playing themselves into bigger and longer contracts with each passing season. Players like Aidan Hutchinson, Brian Branch, and Jahmyr Gibbs continue to dominate their respective positions, which is helping to land the Lions in an impressive pool of contenders each of the last few seasons.
Of course, this isn't exactly sustainable. General manager Brad Holmes is going to have some big decisions to make once the contracts of players like Hutchinson and Penei Sewell are due for extensions, but Detroit is in a good spot with cap space as it currently stands.
Still, we can enjoy the fruits of Holmes' draft labor now, and that's exactly what CBS Sports' Cody Benjamin did by creating an "All-Bargain" NFL team using the top 100 NFL players listed by Pete Prisco.
To no one's surprise, Benjamin's team is chock full of Lions players - they're simply too good for how little they're being paid on their current deals.
Lions top All-Bargain team and make Brad Holmes look like a genius
The Lions players featured in Benjamin's piece include Sewell, Gibbs, Hutchinson and Branch. Detroit has the second-most players from the same team in the article, landing just behind the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles in that respect.
The combined cap hit for all Lions players mentioned in the article totals 27.9 million, which is a tiny fraction of the total $302 million in cap liabilities the Lions owe towards their current roster. Detroit is going to be getting behind the negotiating wheel soon in regards to players like Gibbs, Hutchinson, and Sewell, but might get hairy for players like Branch or even Jameson Williams.
"Building a championship NFL team takes work. It also takes money. In the salary cap era, Super Bowl contenders must be financially sound, properly allocating resources -- and sometimes getting creative with money management -- to build, grow and sustain worthwhile talent," writes Benjamin in his lead-up to this piece.
It's true that teams must remain vigilant and financially flexible when they're able to also contend - when thinking of teams like the Eagles, Washington Commanders, or the Lions, you are thinking of teams that stray away from huge, big swing trades or signings in favor of smarter long-term deal making. That's what makes contention sustainable, and it's a big part of why Detroit has remained a contender for the last three years.
