Nailing down a contract extension for Jared Goff is a “high priority” for GM Brad Holmes and the Lions.
After leading Detroit to its first NFC North Division title and an appearance in the NFC Championship game, it’s hard to imagine it wouldn’t be. But it takes some time.
“He’s earned an extension,” Holmes said Thursday morning on 97.1 The Ticket’s Costa and Jansen. “It’s important, it’s a high priority for us. Both sides are working really, really hard. These things just take time.”
While ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported around the time of the NFL Draft that a new deal for Goff was not “imminent,” it certainly appears one is in the works.
Two weeks ago the Lions shelled out massive extensions for Penei Sewell and Amon-Ra St. Brown. Holmes said “in a perfect world,” he would have liked to have gotten all three extensions done at the same time, but “these things just kind of take a while.”
And the quarterback market adds some complexity to the situation.
“There’s some uniqueness there in some different areas, but still, he’s performed at a high level. You look at what the results have been, and we still feel good about where he’s at,” Holmes told Costa and Jansen. “He’s not one of the guys that was recently drafted and all that stuff. But that’s even better because we even have more of a body of work to examine and analyze.”
Holmes emphasized that both sides — the Lions and Goff’s team — have put in a lot of work towards getting a deal done.
While a timeframe for a possible extension remains unclear, it’s abundantly clear that Holmes and the Lions want to bring back the quarterback who helped lead the team to its first playoff win in three decades and had them one half away from their first-ever Super Bowl appearance, only to see the opportunity squandered in the second half of the NFC Championship.
Goff has one year remaining on his contract, set to be the ninth-highest paid QB in the NFL with a cap hit of $32.3 million.