Dan GrazianoJan 30, 2026, 06:40 AM ETCloseDan Graziano is a senior NFL national reporter for ESPN, covering the entire league and breaking news. Dan also contributes to Get Up, NFL Live, SportsCenter, ESPN Radio, Sunday NFL Countdown and Fantasy Football Now. He is a New Jersey native who joined ESPN in 2011, and he is also the author of two published novels.Follow on XMultiple Authors
play2:25Warner to Eisen: C.J. Stroud has regressed since his rookie seasonKurt Warner joins Rich Eisen and explains his frustration with Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud’s play.
Why Marcus Spears is intrigued by George Pickens’ free agency (0:39)Marcus Spears explains why he’s interested in George Pickens’ free agent market this offseason. (0:39)
Warner to Eisen: C.J. Stroud has regressed since his rookie seasonKurt Warner joins Rich Eisen and explains his frustration with Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud’s play.
Kurt Warner joins Rich Eisen and explains his frustration with Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud’s play.
We’re heading into NFL contract extension season, and every year around this time we like to predict where some of these big deals will land.
A lot of these situations are actually intertwined with others, so we’re taking a close look at a few teams with interesting extension decisions. Obviously, there are plenty that aren’t addressed below, but we picked five teams whose looming extension issues and the potential dominoes are worth discussing.
One of the problems with drafting as well as the Lions have lately is that eventually they have to make some decisions on which guys they can keep and which ones they can’t. Over the last year, the Lions reached extensions with Aidan Hutchinson, Jameson Williams and Kerby Joseph, three stars from their 2022 draft class who were extension-eligible for the first time. This year, they are looking at four stars from their 2023 draft class who are extension-eligible for the first time.
Can they extend them all? Sure, but the way they structure the contracts will be important. Hutchinson’s deal is heavy on year-to-year option bonuses that keep his cap numbers low over the next few years, and part of that is because Detroit knew these other four potential deals were coming. Hutchinson’s extension, for example, pays him an average of $45 million per year, but his 2026 cap number is only $10.15 million, and his 2027 cap number is just $21.74 million.
So, you get the idea … the Lions can keep extending these players as long as they’re willing to build void years into the contracts and spread the cap hits out way into the future. Gibbs and Campbell were both first-round picks, which means the team holds fifth-year options on them for 2027. That likely suggests LaPorta and Branch will be the higher priorities this offseason, since the Lions can hold off Gibbs’ and Campbell’s free agency longer.
LaPorta, who will be coming off a season-ending back injury but has 20 TDs over 42 career games, is unlikely to challenge the top of the tight end market, where George Kittle and Trey McBride come in around $19 million per year. He likely lands closer to T.J. Hockenson (ironically, the guy he sort of replaced in Detroit) and his $17.5 million per year.
The Lions have some weight with LaPorta and Branch because they can threaten one of them with a (likely affordable) 2027 franchise tag. They can’t franchise both players, but they can try to play the two players off each other. If Branch signs first, the Lions can hold the franchise tag leverage over LaPorta — or vice versa.
Again, the Lions have shown they can solve these issues with creative, bonus-heavy contract structures, so it might also be a matter of whether Gibbs is willing to agree to that. Vibes are generally pretty high in Detroit these days, so let’s go ahead and predict the Lions get all of these done with low at-signing guarantees but option bonus structures that make future-year guarantees more attainable. That seems to fit the Lions’ recent pattern.
Stroud, the second pick of the 2023 draft and that season’s Offensive Rookie of the Year, is extension-eligible for the first time in his career. The same is true of Anderson, the third pick in the 2023 draft and that season’s Defensive Rookie of the Year. Nice 2023 draft, Texans … now it’s time to pay up.
Anderson has been a bona fide star, right up through the Texans’ disappointing divisional round loss to the Patriots, in which he had three sacks and two forced fumbles. The league’s highest-paid edge rusher right now is Green Bay’s Micah Parsons at $46.5 million per year, followed by Hutchinson at $45 million per year. The next two are T.J. Watt at $41 million per year and Myles Garrett at $40 million per year.
Anderson will surely try to top $40 million coming off the huge season he just had (12 sacks). Houston could hold the line there, pointing out that Garrett just set the single-season sack record. But during Nick Caserio’s time as GM, the Texans haven’t played hardball with their high-end players, and it’s not hard to imagine them and Anderson working out a deal that lands him in that company.
Warner to Eisen: C.J. Stroud has regressed since his rookie season
So, what’s the sweet spot? Can Stroud top $50 million per year, a number that 11 current QB contracts exceed? Can he top $55 million per year, which is the number currently shared by Joe Burrow, Josh Allen, Jordan Love and Trevor Lawrence?
Stroud’s situation is one to watch carefully. Again, the Texans tend to be generous with their extensions, so we lean toward predicting they’ll find a way to lock him up long term this offseason. But if this season has given them any pause, or if Stroud’s demands come in too high, this could drag out.
Nacua and Young are both 2023 Rams draft picks, though neither was picked in the first round. So the Rams don’t have fifth-year options on either of these guys, both of whom are free agent eligible after the 2026 season.
Nacua (129 catches, 1,715 yards, 10 TDs) and Smith-Njigba (119 catches, 1,793 yards, 10 TDs) are both wonderful, difference-making players. But there are so many impactful wide receivers coming out in the draft every year now that, at some point, more teams are going to say it’s not worth paying top-15 QB money for a WR.
Finally, I’ll point out that the Rams have another looming Matthew Stafford contract situation this offseason, and because he is turning 38, they know they’re going to have to address the quarterback position at some point in the near future.
Schefter expects Matthew Stafford will play next year
London has moments where he looks and plays like a No. 1 wide receiver. He’s also 24 years old and has the talent to be one of the best in the league. But he has gone over 72 catches in only one of his four seasons. Same for the 1,000-yard mark. That will all factor in.
Full disclosure: Guys like linebacker DeMarvion Overshown are extension-eligible in Dallas, too, but this is really just an excuse to bring up the Aubrey situation, which I personally find fascinating. He’s clearly a difference-maker at a position that’s gaining value in the era of super-long field goals and the necessary precision of the revamped kickoff. He’s also a restricted free agent, which gives the Cowboys a lot of leverage in negotiations.
What’s interesting here is that the kicker franchise tag projects to be around $6.7 million, which means it would be cheaper to franchise Aubrey than tender him at the first-round level. The problem with that? Dallas seems likely to use the franchise tag on wide receiver George Pickens if it can’t get an extension done with him. But the point is the Cowboys have a lot of options if they decide they don’t want to make Aubrey the highest-paid kicker in the NFL.
Of course, they could decide to do just that. But these Cowboys contract extension conversations have a way of getting complicated, and we shouldn’t assume an open-and-shut deal here. I’ll still make a prediction, but I’m going to tone it down a bit because the Cowboys have so much leverage and have shown in previous negotiations with their own players that they aren’t afraid to use it.
One thing working in the Lions’ favor is that none of these four players plays a “premium” position such as quarterback, wide receiver or edge rusher that gets paid astronomically. Running back, tight end and safety carry some of the lowest franchise and transition tag numbers in the league — ahead of only kickers and punters. And although the linebacker tag is one of the higher ones, that’s mainly because the tag system lumps 3-4 outside linebackers (who are edge rushers) with 4-3 off-ball linebackers. The top of the market for the type of middle linebacker role that Campbell plays is Fred Warner’s $21 million per year.
Campbell likely holds some decent leverage, then, because the Lions wouldn’t want to franchise him next year if it costs more than $28 million. So, I’d predict they address his situation before they address Gibbs’ but after they see what they can do with LaPorta and Branch, who again don’t have those fifth-year options. Campbell is coming off an 89-tackle, 5-sack season for the Lions. I doubt they’d be willing to go all the way to Warner’s number for Campbell, but I could see him settling in around the same range as guys such as Nick Bolton and Jamien Sherwood, who each got $15 million per year on their most recent extensions. Maybe he shoots for Zack Baun’s $17 million-per-year average.
Branch is also coming off an injury (torn Achilles), but he is a super versatile, vital part of Detroit’s defense. He has 29 pass breakups over his three seasons. And he will surely be looking for something in the range of $20 million per year — especially since the extension fellow safety Kerby Joseph signed with the Lions last year averages $21.25 million, the second-highest average annual salary for a safety behind Kyle Hamilton’s $25 million. Joseph’s deal is heavily backloaded; the Lions can get out of it after 2026 having paid him a total of roughly $24 million over two years. Branch will seek a stronger front-end structure than that.