Detroit Lions running out of players to extend after awarding Alim McNeill deal that runs through 2028

(Getty Images)

Days after rewarding running back David Montgomery with an extension, and months after getting deals done with Jared Goff, Penei Sewell, Amon-Ra St. Brown and Taylor Decker, the Detroit Lions locked up another piece of their foundation Tuesday night, coming to terms on a four-year pact with defensive tackle Alim McNeill.

News of the agreement was broken by McNeill’s agent, Mike McCartney. According to multiple reports, the deal is worth up to $97 million and includes $55 million in guarantees. The average annual value and guarantees would both rank top five among defensive tackles.

The extension should hardly come as a surprise. As noted above, the Lions have been aggressive about locking up their key cogs, plus general manager Brad Holmes acknowledged McNeill was a top priority in a radio interview with 97.1-FM during training camp.

Still, when the deal wasn’t done days before the start of the season, I asked the GM for an update, curious about the status of the negotiations and the urgency to get things done ahead of the regular season.

“I don’t know if it gets tricker (once the season starts), it’s just that — well, first of all, the player, and especially a player like the one you just asked for, is just so focused on just playing and that’s it during the season. …It’s just he’s a player that was coming up that we want to keep around.’ And he’s been a darn good player for us.

“…We haven’t had anything intense going on from a dialogue standpoint, but his camp knows that we want to get something done, but it’s very in the infancy stages right now.”

Of course, it rarely takes long for things to come together when both sides are motivated. So here we are, a little more than six weeks later, with the pieces in place.

The extension announcement comes after McNeill’s best game of the season, a two-sack effort against the Dallas Cowboys.

“Listen, Mac showed up and Mac wasn’t pleased with the way he played against Seattle, so he was a man on a mission before the bye, coming out, and he was locked in this week,” Lions coach Dan Campbell said. “His mind was right and he was going to be a factor in this game. That’s what we expect every week out of Mac is just that.”

Drafted in the third round of the 2021 draft out of North Carolina State, McNeill appeared in all 17 games (six starts) as a rookie. Initially, the Lions used him as an athletic nose tackle, before asking him to play more 3-technique in the back half of his second season. He made the full-time conversion his third year, losing more than 30 pounds during the offseason as part of the transition.

The position tweak tapped into his athletic potential and he delivered his best season in 2023, racking up 5.0 sacks and 43 quarterback pressures, both career-highs, despite playing in just 13 games.

After a stellar training camp this offseason, and the pair of sacks last week, he’s on pace for 8.0 in 2024. Plus, he’s continued to be stout against the run, despite the significant weight loss, playing a key role in Detroit’s dominance in defending opposing ground games the past two seasons.

With the McNeill deal, the Lions are running out of obvious pieces in need of immediate extensions. That said, there are a remaining handful of players on expiring deals who will be worth monitoring before they reach free agency. That group includes cornerback Carlton Davis III, linebacker Derrick Barnes, guard Kevin Zeitler and defensive tackle Levi Onwuzurike, who was selected one round earlier than McNeill in 2021 and is in the midst of a breakout campaign after three injury-plagued seasons.

Additionally, if the team sticks to its proactive blueprint of getting deals done early, defensive end Aidan Hutchinson and wide receiver Jameson Williams could be in the mix for extensions next offseason.

“We’ve always felt the earlier the better for everybody,” Holmes said in August. “First of all, I know that the player doesn’t want to wait around and be strung along. And us as an organization, we do a lot of planning and preparation to reward these players as early as possible because you don’t know what’s going to happen the next week, the next month.

“We just have to worry about what we have to do, and we try to do with the best we can in terms of prediction and operating with discernment with all that stuff. But that’s how we choose to operate.”