On Wednesday night the Detroit Lions made All-Pro Kerby Joseph the highest paid safety in NFL history with a massive four-year extension worth $86 million.
This spawned a conversation on social media, with Lions fans quickly coming to the realization that keeping every player is just going to be really hard to do. So naturally, everyone wants to brace themselves by trying to figure out who the odd man out is. A strong contingent of fans made their pick and it's safety Brian Branch.
An odd man out seems inevitable at this point. Sure, there could be ways that the Lions can figure out how to keep everyone, and we'll see that when that day comes, but life is a lot easier if there is one less big contract to pay out. With that said, Brian Branch is the farthest thing from the odd man out.
Yes, Joseph is the All-Pro and got the big contract, but that does not make Branch expendable. There are few players in the NFL who can do what Branch can do.
Branch reminds me of the line in The Departed where Frank Costello is explaining to Billy that John Lennon once said, "I'm an artist. You get me a tuba and I'll get something out of it." That's Branch. He's the John Lennon of football.
He's a guy that the Lions can play at either safety and then put at any of the cornerback spots, and he's going to succeed. They could probably put him at linebacker, and he'd figure out a way to make it work. You just don't want to move on from players like that.
Now, what that likely means is two things. The Lions are probably going to have to pay Branch more than Joseph because that's just the way the market is going to move. Ravens safety Kyle Hamilton is next in line, and he's rightly going to be the highest-paid safety because he is the best safety in the league.
There's a possibility that Branch could get a four-year extension worth more than $90 million. The Lions would have the highest-piad safety duo in NFL history, and it would be worth every single penny.
Just ask the Seahawks how that worked out for them when they had Kam Chancellor and Earl Thomas as the highest and second-highest paid safeties in the league during the Legion of Boom days. They went back-to-back Super Bowls and won one of them.
With as good and as cheap as their cornerback room is right now, the Lions have the chance to be this generation's L.O.B. You definitely do not want to disrupt that in any way.
