In the past four years as Detroit Lions general manager, Bob Quinn has elected to pick up the fifth-year options on Taylor Decker (2016), Eric Ebron (2014) — who was released before his contract became fully guaranteed — and Ezekiel Ansah (2013), while 2015 first-round pick Laken Tomlinson was traded away before the option came into play.
This year Quinn needed to make a decision on the fifth-year option of 2017 first-round pick Jarrad Davis and according to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport — whose report has been confirmed by multiple Lions beat writers –, Quinn has declined to pick it up, making Davis an unrestricted free agent after the end of 2020 season.
This move isn’t overly surprising as Davis had several factors working against him.
The first glaring obstacle is the way the roster has been constructed around him. The Lions recently drafted Jahlani Tavai in the second round of the 2019 draft, gave a contract extension to Christian Jones, and signed high-profile free agent Jamie Collins to a three-year deal — all of which will make Davis’ path to playing time challenging.
Not only will Davis be fighting for time, but he is coming off his worst statistical performance of his three years as a professional. He did five games due to injury — which is also a problem — but his per-game averages all declined. His tackles were below his career average (down from 6.53 to 5.73), as were his sacks (two in 2019 vs a career average of four per season), and passes defended (one in 2019 vs a career average of four per season).
The final — and likely biggest — deterrent for an extension was the cost of the contract. First-round pick selection (Davis was 21st) determines the contract formula, which for Davis is an average of third through 25th highest-paid players at his position (linebacker). That roughly works out to a 1-year, $10 million deal for the 2021 season, much too high for a player who could be in a rotational role moving forward.
Davis is still under contract with the Lions for the 2020 season and has a cap hit of just under $3.5 million. He is also a team captain, leader in the locker room and the team loves him as a person and always speaks highly of his character — but as we learned with Devon Kennard this past offseason, it’s all about what you do on the field.
If he produces between the lines, it’s not out of the question that Davis returns to Detroit in 2021 with a new contract, but there are a lot of obstacles he will need to overcome to make that happen.