This offseason, it was a bit surprising to see that the Detroit Lions\u2014after using a third-round pick to trade for him in 2024\u2014opted not to re-sign cornerback Carlton Davis after a solid year with the team. It turns out the Lions did make a play to re-sign the veteran cornerback, but there was a dispute in the contract language that prevented the two sides from coming together again.<\/p>\n
Davis vaguely explained that this week to Dave Birkett down at the Super Bowl.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just the terms of the deal, which [\u2026] I\u2019m just going to keep undisclosed,\u201d Davis said. \u201cIt was like the language inside of it that I wasn\u2019t really fond of. So that was really it, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Davis opted to sign a three-year, $54 million contract ($34.5 million guaranteed) with the New England Patriots. Meanwhile, the Lions pivoted to free agent cornerback D.J. Reed, who they inked to a three-year, $48 million contract with $32 million guaranteed.<\/p>\n
Obviously, things have worked out for Davis, who is seeking his second Super Bowl ring on Sunday after winning it all with the Buccaneers five years ago. Meanwhile, Reed had a tumultuous year in Detroit following a serious hamstring injury that cost him six games.<\/p>\n
Despite the contractual dispute, Davis has no ill will toward the Lions organization, including coach Dan Campbell and general manager Brad Holmes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love Detroit. Before the season started, I was rooting for those guys as far as like them making it back to the playoffs. I still got a lot of close relationships with the team,\u201d Davis said. \u201cEven like how it went with free agency with us and Brad and Dan, it was like a straight-up process. It wasn\u2019t no bullshit around it. It was good conversation, good communication, so I got nothing bad to say about them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sometimes things just don\u2019t work out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This offseason, it was a bit surprising to see that the Detroit Lions\u2014after using a third-round pick to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":731279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2071],"tags":[146,113,11309,153,1889,2506,7,147,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-731278","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-lions","8":"tag-detroit","9":"tag-detroit-lions","10":"tag-detroit-lions-free-agency","11":"tag-detroit-lions-news","12":"tag-detroit-lions-quotes","13":"tag-detroitlions","14":"tag-football","15":"tag-lions","16":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116018507494348276","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=731278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/731279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=731278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=731278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=731278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}