Holmes: It’s a ‘high priority,’ Goff has ‘earned an extension’
The Detroit Lions signed two of their cornerstone offensive players to longterm contract extension earlier this offseason, and general manager Brad Holmes said he still is confident a third deal gets done this summer with quarterback Jared Goff.
“First and foremost, he’s earned an extension,” Holmes said Thursday in an interview on WXYT-FM (97.1). “It’s important, it’s a high priority for us and both sides are working really, really hard and these things just take time.”
The Lions finalized multi-year extensions with wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown and right tackle Penei Sewell the day before the NFL draft last month.
St. Brown signed a four-year, $120.1 million extension that briefly made him the highest-paid receiver in the NFL; the Philadelphia Eagles signed A.J. Brown to a three-year, $96 million extension a day later.
And Sewell inked a four-year, $112 million deal that makes him the highestpaid offensive lineman in the game.
St. Brown’s deal runs through 2028, while Sewell’s deal, which was finalized after the Lions exercised the fifth-year option on his rookie contract, runs through 2029.
Holmes, in his most extensive comments on Goff’s contract to date, said the organization started planning for all three deals before the end of last season.
“The whole process of budgeting and preparation and all that, that kind of goes into it, we’ve been preparing for a while,” Holmes said. “And look, in a perfect world, we’d have had all three of them done, bang, bang, bang, but these things just kind of take a while, especially with the quarterback market. But I do have faith that it’s going to get done.”
Goff is expected to command somewhere around $50 million on his next contract, which would make among the highest-paid quarterbacks in the game.
Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert, Lamar Jackson and Jalen Hurts are the only currently quarterbacks on deals that average
more than $50 million per season, and Patrick Mahomes restructured part of his contract last fall to guarantee him $210 million over the next four seasons.
Dak Prescott of the Dallas Cowboys, Trevor Lawrence of the Jacksonville Jaguars and Tua Tagovailoa of the Miami Dolphins also are in line for mega quarterback extensions this offseason.
Goff, who helped the Lions reach the NFC championship game last season and is coming off one of the best years of his career, said earlier this offseason he
was confident he’d get a new deal at some point though he insisted, “I’m not in control of that.”
Holmes said Thursday there is “some uniqueness” to working out a veteran quarterback contract, but said Goff has “performed at a high level and you look at what the results have been and we still feel good about where he’s at.”
“We’ve done a lot of work — again both sides have, we’ve done a lot of work,” Holmes said. “Dialogue has been consistent. there hasn’t been just dead
periods and all that stuff, so we’ve been talking and again, I do have faith through all the looking at all the numbers, and you got to think about what can we do now and what are the impacts on the future as well. And we look at all of it because we’ve said all along when Dan (Campbell) and I first got here we’re looking to build sustained success and that’s still the goal.”