Lions hire Disner to take care of money matters

With money to spend, the Detroit Lions now have a new person set to handle the financial details. The Lions hired Mike Disner on Tuesday as the team’s vice-president of football administration. The move comes a day after the club parted ways with Matt Harriss, who had the same title and was brought in by Lions general manager Bob Quinn in 2016. The Lions are expected to have as much as US$50 million in freeagent money available this year, which will make long-term decisions key for the club. “There’s more availability,” Quinn said of money for free agents. “We’re aggressive in the way we go out evaluating players … but there’s a ceiling of what we think the value is.” Disner, who is originally from Bloomfield Hills, Mich., spent the past six seasons with the Arizona Cardinals as the team’s director of football administration. During that time, he helped manage player contract negotiations and was directly involved with the team’s strategic planning of its salary cap. He also served as the Cardinals’ liaison to the NFL management council.

Prior to being hired by Arizona, Disner worked with the NFL management council for four years and was labour operations manager in 2012.

He began his NFL career as a scouting assistant with the New England Patriots in 2007 after working as an intern for the team for two summers (2005 and 2006).