With the NFL Combine in the rear view mirror, it\u2019s officially rumor season. NFL free agency is next week, and reporters across the league are sharing their tidbits they learned from talking to agents, coaches, and front office members.<\/p>\n
When it comes to the Detroit Lions, we\u2019re already getting conflicting information on what may be ahead for general manager Brad Holmes and company.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d expect the acquisition of (Juice) Scruggs to be the first one in a little bit of an offensive line reworking,\u201d Breer wrote. \u201cDetroit\u2019s identity was built through that position group through Dan Campbell\u2019s first four years, and fell off a bit last year. To get it back to where it was, I wouldn\u2019t rule out a big swing by Detroit, maybe on someone such as Ravens free-agent center Tyler Linderbaum.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last week, Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta said the team would like to retain Linderbaum and even said they\u2019ve already offered him a deal that would make him the highest-paid center.<\/p>\n
\u201cTyler\u2019s a guy I have tremendous respect for. Obviously, he\u2019s proven to be, in my opinion, the best center in the league,\u201d DeCosta said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been having conversations, we\u2019ve had conversations since the end of the season, and at this point in time, we\u2019ve made him a market-setting deal proposal offer, and hopefully we can get something done with him between now and the start of the new league year.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Lions are certainly in the market for a center after releasing Graham Glasgow this week. It\u2019s possible Juice Scruggs, whom the Lions acquired via the David Montgomery trade, could contend for that spot. Another possibility is the Lions move second-year offensive lineman Tate Ratledge to center.<\/p>\n
Which brings us to a rumor conflicting Breer\u2019s reporting.<\/p>\n
\u201cMultiple agents who met with the Lions at the NFL combine do not expect the team to be major players in free agency, and one who spoke with the team believes they will move Tate Ratledge to center and open competition at the guard spots,\u201c Birkett wrote on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
So there you have it. Either the Lions will be super aggressive in free agency and possibly land the best center in football, or they\u2019ll be very modest in free agency and move their guard with limited center experience into the starting center role.<\/p>\n
For what it\u2019s worth, Lions general manager Brad Holmes certainly seemed a bit more open to the idea of spending in free agency when talking about it at the NFL Combine.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll have flexibility to do some things,\u201d Holmes said. \u201cI don\u2019t think every single year is the same. It\u2019s not just last year we had this approach but it could be entirely different this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
The \u201clegal tampering\u201d period opens on Monday, March 9 at 12 p.m. ET.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the NFL Combine in the rear view mirror, it\u2019s officially rumor season. NFL free agency is next…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":790598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2071],"tags":[146,113,11309,153,5845,2506,7,147,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-790597","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-rumors","13":"tag-detroitlions","14":"tag-football","15":"tag-lions","16":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116168947575975705","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790597","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=790597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/790598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=790597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=790597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=790597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}