Tag and release: Lions should franchise Suh for one more all-in season, then let him go
To tag or not to tag?
It's the great debate that will be answered by 4 p.m. Monday, the deadline for the Detroit Lions to decide whether to put the franchise tag on All-Pro defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh.
There's no perfect solution here, but there's a decent compromise: Put the franchise tag on him, go all in for 2015, then let him go after the 2015 season and start to correct the problems of an extremely top-heavy payroll.
If the Lions use the tag, they'll keep Suh out of free agency for another year, but it will come at the crazy price of a $26.9 million for next season.
Add in the $9.7 million in "dead money" that carries over from restructures made to Suh's previous contract, and his total cap hit for 2015 will be more than $36 million -- or about 25 percent of the team's projected total salary cap.
If the Lions don't tag him, Suh will be on the verge of entering the open market on March 10 and, more than likely, ready to take the very highest bid.
With seven teams -- Jacksonville, Oakland, Cleveland, the New York Jets, Indianapolis, Tennessee and Cincinnati -- all having more than $40 million in cap space available, the offers could become outrageous. The Lions would be foolish to get into one of those bidding wars and ruin their salary structure for the foreseeable future.
If you've flip-flopped over the last year on which direction the Lions should go -- keep Suh or let him walk -- you're not alone.
Whatever they decide, it will come with a significant plus and a significant minus. They either lose the star of their emerging defense but keep their payroll under better control. Or they bring Suh back for at least another year while their salary structure -- so crucial in a salary-cap era -- gets completely thrown out of whack.
The only way this could have worked out perfectly for the Lions is if Suh had decided to take less money on a long-term contract. That way they could have put more talent around him fo a championship run. But the chance of Suh agreeing to that was likely always zero.
From all indications, he wants to be the highest-paid defensive player in the game, a distinction that currently belongs to Houston Texans defensive lineman J.J. Watt. He re-signed for six years and $100 million, including about $52 million guaranteed, when he wasn't even about to enter free agency.
Suh, 28, has been the mark of durability over his first five years in the NFL, never missing a game because of injury. But that's a result of good fortune, too. It's not likely to continue forever -- not in professional football, where it's often said that there's a "100-percent injury rate."
Any team that signs Suh to a massive long-term contract quite possibly will regret it on the back end of the deal.
The Lions are already paying quarterback Matthew Stafford and receiver Calvin Johnson mega-money -- $38 million in combined cap hits for 2015 -- so a third enormous lengthy contract would be a dangerous route to take in a sport where quality depth is so important because of the injury factor.
The Lions got away with it last season, but it hurt them in previous years, including 2013 when they faded down the stretch.
The reason Suh's franchise-tag price is so high is the result of a back-loaded original contract that paid him $22.4 million in 2014. By franchising him, Suh would be in line for a 20-percent raise from the previous year. Thus, $26.9 million.
Technically, the Lions could franchise him again in 2016, but that would require another 20-percent raise, resulting in a $32 million salary-cap hit. And they could do it again in 2017, but with another 44-percent hike, putting Suh's price tag then at more than $45 million.
So, realistically, the franchise thing is a one-and-done way to keep him for a year. And even that's a consideration, in my opinion, only because the Lions were close enough last season to contending to justify this move.
The window of opportunity could close quickly anyway for the Lions' core group, with Johnson entering his ninth NFL season and showing signs of becoming more prone to injuries.
After winning 11 games and making the playoffs, however, the Lions really need to stick this out -- pay Suh the franchise money and take another shot at a Super Bowl with him leading a defense that surprisingly became one of the best in the league.
This is the closest this franchise has been to competing for a championship in a long time -- maybe ever. They can't just walk away from that without one more try.
