Salary Cap

Detroit Lions

The Lions currently carry $14.9M in cap room (rank 21 of 32) with $30.5M in dead money on the books (rank 16 of 32), which limits immediate spending but is not a crisis. The $19.2M rollover (rank 6 of 32) provides a meaningful cushion heading into the offseason. Cutting clean-cap candidates like Joshua Dobbs, Michael Niese, Devin Cochran, Troy Reeder, and Malik Cunningham collectively adds several million without a dollar of dead money, while moves like the Brock Wright cut require absorbing $1.4M in dead money against the $3.3M freed. The Larry Borom situation is the trickiest, as releasing him frees $2.4M but triggers $2.6M in dead money, producing a net cap loss this season. The big picture is encouraging: committed salary drops from $262.3M next season to $266.7M the season after, then falls sharply to $160.7M in year three, which is when Detroit will have the most room to build aggressively around its young core. With 43 expiring contracts on the roster, the front office will have plenty of opportunities to reshape the payroll and reward the players who matter most.