Detroit Lions: Golden Tate’s departure doesn’t have to be certain

Many believe this will be Golden Tate’s final year with the Detroit Lions thanks to his expiring contract but that doesn’t have to be a foregone conclusion.

Golden Tate has proven to be a bargain for the Detroit Lions from the very beginning of the five-year, $31 million contract prior to the 2014 season. Now in the final year of that deal, Tate’s future with the Lions is in doubt.

Tate remains a big part of the Lions offense, but he will be 31 years old entering next season and likely looking at his last chance to cash in on a big NFL contract. He couldn’t be blamed for wanting to seek huge dollars after his last contract proved to be such a bargain. Tate could double the $6.2 million per year average of his previous contract and still not crack the current top 10 salaries for wide receivers.

With Marvin Jones and Kenny Golladay under contract through the 2020 season and Tate likely headed for a big payday, many expect that Tate will be playing somewhere other than Detroit in 2019. However, it doesn’t have to be that way.

There is no doubt the Lions’ wide receiver corps is one of the team’s strengths. They will still be in good shape with Jones and Golladay if Tate does depart, but sometimes it makes more sense to make sure you keep a strength a strength.

The question becomes, how does that work out financially? Tate should expect a nice raise from his current contract despite his age. To start a comp for what a Tate contract could look like we can look to DeSean Jackson and Emmanuel Sanders as a minimum. Both signed three-year deals that average $11 million per season for Sanders and just over that for Jackson. Sanders was 30 when that deal started and Jackson was 31.

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The age is in range for Tate but those deals began in 2017 and went to players not as productive as Tate has been and continues to be. Add in some cap inflation, a boost for productivity and it wouldn’t be unfair to peg a number in the neighborhood of $14 million to $14.5 million per year. That is on par with the likes of Stefon Diggs and Davante Adams. They may have the edge in youth, but Tate maintains an edge in production.

That kind of number might look shocking at first and be a boost to those of the opinion that the Lions simply can’t afford to keep Tate around given other needs and the viable receiving options that would remain. It is totally possible general manager Bob Quinn will agree with that line of thinking but the situation gets more interesting when considering the numbers behind the numbers.

Thanks to the original structure of Tate’s deal withe Lions and a previous restructure, he already counts for $9,351,250 against the Lions’ 2018 cap, making the jump to, say, $14 million about $4.65 million over what they are already carrying on their cap.

The situation gets even more interesting when viewed in terms of the overall position group. Marvin Jones will see his cap number drop by $500,000 next season while TJ Jones’ $1.9 million comes off the books. Discount that by about a $100,000 increase that Kenny Golladay will see to his 2019 cap hit over 2018 and the increase in overall wide receiver spending for the 2019 cap is down to just $2.35 million to keep Tate at $14 million per season.

According to Overthecap.com, the Lions have $21,729,685 committed to the wide receiver position for 2018. This ranks just tenth in the league despite fielding perhaps the NFL’s best wide receiver trio. In fact, that total ranks just third in the division behind the Packers ($26,726,265) and Bears ($25,596,139). Even with a new contract for Golden Tate, the Lions could keep their trio intact while still remaining outside the current top five for wide receiver spending league-wide.

It might be a different scenario if the Lions were going to be tight for cap space in 2019 but that isn’t the case. There will certainly be areas in which they will want and need to spend money but keeping Golden Tate can be one of them, if they so desire.