![\"Lions](\"https:\/\/cdn.vox-cdn.com\/thumbor\/8Y75KNjy6ah0nc7CLbZT-cPNzpY=\/0x0:5010x3340\/1200x800\/filters:focal(2479x1063:3279x1863)\/cdn.vox-cdn.com\/uploads\/chorus_image\/image\/73976210\/2201951952.0.jpg\")
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It\u2019s not easy having an abundance of talent in the NFL. In the salary cap era, the league has purposely tried to make it hard for one team to hoard all of the talent, even if that team managed to find those players all on their own through the draft. It\u2019s only a matter of time before teams have to make tough decisions on talented players due to the rising costs of an increasingly improved roster.<\/p>\n
The Detroit Lions are nearing that time in their development, and general manager Brad Holmes openly admitted this during the NFL Combine last month.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of decisions that we have to make,\u201d Holmes said. \u201cBecause we\u2019re at the point, we\u2019re at the juncture with our roster right now that we have identified a lot of young core pieces that we want to keep around and unfortunately that\u2019s the tough part is that you got to make decisions on other players contractually that you might not be able to keep that you want to keep. So it\u2019s not more so due to you don\u2019t want to have the players anymore but you just can\u2019t have everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve already seen the results of this cap-saving strategy with a modest free agency from the Lions. As of this publishing, the Lions only signed six external free agents, and only one was signed to a multi-year deal.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s only the first stage. At some point, the Lions are going to have to let some talented players walk. Sometimes that will mean via free agency, but that could also mean trading away players to maximize the team\u2019s return on a player they can\u2019t afford to re-sign. We\u2019ve seen some of the best teams in the NFL apply this strategy, whether it be the Kansas City Chiefs with players like Tyreek Hill and Joe Thuney, the 49ers with Deebo Samuel, or the Philadelphia Eagles with C.J. Gardner-Johnson.<\/p>\n
In this week\u2019s Midweek Mailbag, we discuss whether the Lions could be the next team in line to trade away some of their talented players in an effort to keep costs low and maximize their draft capital. Are the Lions positioned in a way where they need <\/em>to do it? Which players could be on the block as soon as the trade deadline this year? And what kind of value are we talking about? Our discussion on that topic begins around the 29:40 mark of this week\u2019s episode.<\/p>\n Other topics on this week\u2019s show (in chronological order):<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Detroit Lions may have to make some tough roster decisions ahead. Does that eventually mean trading away talent?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18198,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-detroit-lions"],"yoast_head":"\n\n