Worried the Lions might trade Stafford? Don’t be.
Dave Birkett
Lions general manager Bob Quinn quickly and strongly refuted a report that the team is engaged in talks to trade quarterback Matthew Stafford, texting the Free Press early this morning to say the report is “100% False!!” Quinn’s denial should (but probably won’t) end speculation about the team moving on from Stafford this offseason, but plenty of questions remain about his future in Detroit, why Quinn is so adamant about not trading Stafford and what the Lions will do with the third pick in April’s NFL draft. Let’s address some of those here:
If you’re the Lions, why not trade Stafford?
As I explained on Twitter on Thursday morning, it doesn’t make sense for the Lions to trade Stafford right now for several reasons. First and most importantly, he was playing really good football last season when he injured his back. Both Quinn and Lions coach Matt Patricia are in a win-now situation
after last year’s 3-12-1 debacle, and Stafford, assuming he’s healthy, gives the team a better chance to win in 2020 than any reasonable replacement.
Beyond those football reasons, it makes financial sense for the Lions to keep Stafford. The Lions did a simple restructure of Stafford’s contract in December to convert a $6 million roster bonus, originally due in March, to a
signing bonus. There would have been no reason for the Lions to make that move with any intention of trading Stafford. First, the acquiring team would have been on the hook for the $6 million payment at the start of the new league year, and second, that move made the dead money on Stafford’s contract — the money that counts
against the salary cap in the event he’s not on the team — jump to a whopping $32 million should they trade him before June 1.
If Stafford plays this season for the Lions, he’ll count just $21.3 million against the cap. So, in a must-win season, when Stafford is their best bet for success on the field, it will cost the Lions to have him on their roster than it does for them to send him elsewhere.
less OK, but why refute the report rather than let it linger to help facilitate a trade in the draft?
For starters, if Stafford is going to be your quarterback for the all-important upcoming season, you want him to know you believe in him. The WDIV-TV report, which said trade talks have been ongoing for weeks, was public enough and personal enough to warrant a public response from the Lions, especially after it prompted Stafford’s wife, Kelly, to address it in an Instagram story: “Well if detroit is done with us,” she wrote.
But understand what Quinn said (and didn’t say), too. Quinn shot down a potential Stafford trade, but he did not say anything about the Lions potentially addressing the quarterback position in the draft.
The Lions are in the rare position with the No. 3 pick where they might have the chance to take the draft’s top quarterback prospect, Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa. No matter how unlikely that seems, Quinn did not close the door on drafting Tagovailoa (or LSU’s Joe Burrow, should he fall to No. 3) with his comments, so any team wanting a quarterback still has to account for both the Lions’ quarterback needs and other teams’ willingness to move up in their thought process.
Do you think Tagovailoa is really in play for the Lions at No. 3?
I don’t think the Lions will draft Tagovailoa, no. But I do think they’ll do all the diligence on Tagovailoa (and Burrow) that you’d expect from a team picking that high, both to rule him in or out as a pick and to keep up appearances for the rest of the NFL. They’ll go to his workout (or host their own, if Tagovailoa does private workouts). They’ll spend time with him in the pre-draft process. They’ll go over his medicals with a fine-tooth comb.
Tagovailoa could be the NFL’s next great quarterback, and a team like the Lions, with a 32-year-old quarterback coming off a seasonending back injury, has to consider him. Tagovailoa has health concerns of his own, and that coupled with the Lions’ need to win now, I believe, ultimately will lead the team in another direction.
So what do the Lions do in the draft?
First, let me say that Tagovailoa is a top-five pick if he checks out medically from the dislocated hip he suffered in November.
What about Stafford’s future?
Stafford has two seasons left on his current contract and he strikes me as a quarterback who’ll play another six or eight years, at least. Both he and Quinn say they expect him to make a full recovery from his back injury, and I feel pretty confident in saying Stafford will be on the field for the Lions when the offseason program opens in April and the regular season begins in September.
Whether he’s a Lion beyond 2020 probably depends on what happens on the field this fall. Stafford is better than the vast majority of quarterbacks in the NFL, but the reality is the Lions have not won anything with him under center.
If that changes this year, if he leads them to the playoffs and Quinn and Patricia keep their jobs, it’d be silly to think the Lions would do anything other than move forward with Stafford as their quarterback. If that doesn’t happen, these rumors will run hot and heavy again next winter, when the Lions may really have a decision to make on Stafford’s future and whether to keep him, trade him or find a young replacement in the draft.
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.