veteran minimum, as a player with three credited seasons<\/a>. With none of that salary guaranteed and no workout or game bonuses, this is literally a no-risk move for the Lions. If Turner doesn\u2019t make the team, Detroit will face no dead cap. If he does make the team, he\u2019ll be making the literal minimum of a player with his level experience.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s easy to see why the Lions offered this kind of contract and Turner accepted. The 27-year-old defensive end has seen his football career plagued with injuries, even dating back to his college years in Houston. He\u2019s had a foot injury, shoulder injury, low ankle sprain, another foot injury (requiring surgery), and missed all of 2025 with a rib fracture. In total, he\u2019s only played in 31 of 85 game opportunities.<\/p>\n
And even when he has played, his productivity has been limited. He has yet to start an NFL game, never logged more than 40 snaps in a single game, and only has 5.0 career sacks with 11 quarterback hits and 50 total tackles.<\/p>\n
That said, there are some potential upsides to this add. For one, the New Orleans Saints drafted him in the first round due to some serious athletic potential. He\u2019s built well at 6-foot-6, 270 pounds and has the athleticism to go with that size.<\/p>\n
Additionally, he did play 16 games in 2024 and had some decent production as a rotational player. In 335 snaps (21 per game), Turner produced 21 tackles, 2.0 sacks, four passes defended, two forced fumbles and a decent 70.8 pass rush grade from PFF.<\/p>\n
So, in short, this is a zero-risk signing from the Lions on a player that has good physical traits and one full season of promising production.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The contract details for Detroit Lions free agency signing Payton Turner are out, and they\u2019re exactly what you\u2019d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":831496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[52187,449,11309,7],"class_list":["post-831495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-detroit-lions-contracts-and-salary-cap","tag-detroit-lions-analysis","tag-detroit-lions-free-agency","tag-football"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116285787690830724","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831495","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=831495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/831496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=831495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=831495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=831495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}