The Detroit Lions have one of the best young pass-rushers in the NFL in Aidan Hutchinson.
Hutchinson was taken with the No. 2 pick in the 2022 NFL Draft and has racked up 28.5 sacks in 39 career games. The Michigan product went down with an injury last October and still ended the season with the most sacks on the team.
Naturally, the Lions are interested in keeping the star defender in town for a long time. 2025 is the last year of Hutchinson’s rookie deal, but the team will definitely pick up the star’s fifth-year option. The team has until May 1 to pick up that option if an extension isn’t reached beforehand.
On Monday, Lions president Rod Wood gave an encouraging update regarding Hutchinson’s future while speaking at a pre-draft event hosted by the Detroit Economic Club.
Wood was asked if the team is currently working on an extension for Hutchinson.
“No comment,” Wood said. “He will be here the long haul, I can assure you of that.”
Standout picks from the 2021 class, Penei Sewell, Amon-Ra St. Brown, and Alim McNeill were all re-signed last year. Notably, Sewell and St. Brown signed their extensions on the same day, which was the day before the 2024 NFL Draft.
If that trend continues, then an extension for Hutchinson could be coming as soon as this week.
“We’ll start working on that,” Wood said of Hutchinson’s new deal. “And we have a track record of extending our own players, which we’ve done that recently with Sewell and St. Brown and McNeill, and I think that Hutch is likely to be coming up soon.”
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Spotrac projects Hutchinson to earn a massive four-year extension worth $30.5 million annually on his next contract. Over the Cap projects the Lions to only have around $5 million in cap space next offseason, so it will be interesting to see how the team fits all of these contracts in.
Clearly, the Lions will make Hutchinson a priority. The star edge-rusher finished 2nd in Defensive Rookie of the Year Voting in 2022 and earned a Pro Bowl Berth in 2023. Hutchinson definitely would’ve earned another Pro Bowl bid had he stayed healthy in 2024.
Now, Hutchinson should be healthy for the 2025 season as the Lions have their eyes on a Super Bowl run.
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