Suddenly, the Detroit Lions\u2019 safety room is feeling a bit crowded. On Monday, the Lions announced that they\u2019ve re-signed veteran defensive back Avonte Maddox. Immediate contract details were not made available.<\/p>\n
Maddox returns to the team after a very solid first season in Detroit in 2025. The former fourth-round pick spent his first seven seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles, but last year he signed a one-year, $1.4 million deal to help out with secondary depth. Capable of playing both nickel and safety, Maddox opened the season as a reserve, playing just 43 defensive snaps through the first nine weeks of the season.<\/p>\n
However, when the injury bug hit the Lions\u2019 safety room hard in the back half of the season, Maddox stepped up and played good, sound football on the Lions\u2019 defensive back-end. He was particularly helpful after Brian Branch went down with a torn Achilles against the Dallas Cowboys in Week 14.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaddox went in there for him the other day, and we thought he did a hell of a job, he really did,\u201d coach Dan Campbell said in December. \u201cI mean, he played his tail off, which is why he\u2019s here, because he\u2019s a football guy. He\u2019s got versatility, nickel that can play safety. Man, he put out a lot of fires back there for us, made quite a few plays.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maddox returns to a safety position that has a lot of questions right now. Branch may not be ready for the start of the season, Kerby Joseph is working through a knee injury that may linger, and the Lions have added a few new pieces to contend. Maddox will have to compete with the likes of Thomas Harper, Christian Izien, Dan Jackson, and Chuck Clark, who signed with the team last week.<\/p>\n
Suddenly, their depth chart at safety looks like this:<\/p>\n
It\u2019s worth noting that a lot of those players\u2014including Maddox\u2014have the versatility to play at the nickel cornerback position.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Suddenly, the Detroit Lions\u2019 safety room is feeling a bit crowded. On Monday, the Lions announced that they\u2019ve…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":858229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[11309,153,2705,7,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-858228","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-detroit-lions-free-agency","9":"tag-detroit-lions-news","10":"tag-detroit-lions-transactions","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116361690281933569","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858228","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=858228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/858229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=858228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=858228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=858228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}