The Detroit Lions pulled themselves back into the black on the NFL salary cap on Saturday. Detroit converted $6 million of left tackle Taylor Decker’s 2022 base salary to a signing bonus, a maneuver that created $4.5 million of cap space this season.
The restructure with Decker gives the Lions some needed breathing room around the salary cap. The Lions now have just over $2 million (exact figure: $2,056,210) in available cap space according to the figures at Over The Cap. The calculations at Spotrac list the Lions with $3.4 million but they do not include new QB Nate Sudfeld’s contract, the details of which have not yet been publicly verified.
Decker’s overall contract value did not change, but converting the salary to a bonus spreads out the cap impact of the $6 million value over the remaining four years of the deal–the last of which (2025) is a void year.
Lions depth chart: Breaking down each position on the 53-man roster
