When Ndamukong Suh missed the first practice of his NFL career for health reasons this week, it gave the Lions a glimpse of what life would be like without him.
C.J. Mosley at one defensive tackle spot, Andre Fluellen at the other, Jason Jones and Ziggy Ansah at end, and no one going out of their way to avoid the run like they do now.
Maybe that's not entirely fair. If Suh left in free agency this off-season, the Lions surely would sign some stopgap defensive tackle who's not nearly as good to take his place, and Mosley, Fluellen and the oft-injured Nick Fairley are all in their contract years, too.
But the sight of that not-so-formidable foursome lined up side-by-side Thursday confirmed what Suh has made crystal clear with another all-pro-caliber year: The Lions would be fools to let him go.
There's a very real chance that Suh will play his final home game as a Lion on Sunday against the Minnesota Vikings at Ford Field.
His rookie contract voids five days after the Super Bowl, and unless the Lions use the franchise tag that they've made more onerous by their own salary-cap mismanagement, there's little incentive for Suh to sign before testing the open market.
He has already assumed a high level of risk by playing the season without a long-term deal in place — remember, it was the Lions, not Suh, who tabled negotiations at the start of training camp — and the longer he lets talks run, the more leverage he has.
Suh isn't the best defensive player in the game. That's J.J. Watt by a clear margin.
But if he's not No. 2, he's close, and his aversion to contract risk, which most players despise, has left him on the precipice of cashing in with the biggest deal by a defensive player in NFL history.
Watt, a legitimate MVP candidate, holds that title for now, but he signed his six-year, $100-million extension, including $51.8 million guaranteed, with two years left on his rookie contract.
When the Lions halted talks with Suh in July, many assumed the three-time Pro Bowler was doing everything he could to avoid staying in Detroit without admitting that was the case. He slow-played an agent change last winter, he stayed home during a voluntary minicamp in spring, and his sister once pressed send on a cryptic tweet that seemed to indicate he was out the door the minute it was possible.
The truth of the matter is, Suh, who by all accounts has a strong relationship with Lions coach Jim Caldwell, and the Lions never were close to a deal.
The Lions argued in contract talks that Suh was a dominant defensive tackle and should be paid as such. Suh and his representatives countered that he was a much more transcendent player with his own spot on the pay scale.
It's not known how big the gulf in negotiations was, only that it was sizable — Watt's deal averages $16.7 million a year, Gerald McCoy, the highest-paid defensive tackle, makes $3 million less per season, and both got more than $51 million guaranteed on their extensions this fall — and that talks ended amicably and won't hinder negotiations going forward.
Joel Corry, a former NFL agent who now writes about league business matters for CBS Sports, said Suh is in position to demand a contract worth somewhere around $18 million per year and set new standards for guaranteed money and three-year average for a defensive player after the season.
Judging by past contracts handed out — the Buffalo Bills gave Mario Williams $16 million per year when he was coming off an injury-shortened season and clearly not the best player at his position, albeit one that commands a premium — and Suh's status as a pending free agent having a career year for the league's No. 1 defense, that doesn't seem too far-fetched.
"I've always said that the Lions should have just, if they really wanted him, given him a blank contract, signed it when they gave it to him and told him to fill in the numbers," said Corry, who once helped negotiate a deal that made John Randle the highest-paid defensive tackle in football. "That's how much leverage I thought he had."
There are no Michael Jordans in the NFL, so Suh, who insisted this week that agent Jimmy Sexton will pick his next team, is not a sign-at-any-cost player.
But in a rising salary-cap environment — the Lions project to enter the off-season with about $20 million in cap room on a $140-million cap, with four other free-agent starters to re-sign or replace — and considering what the 9-4 Lions have built this year, they need to keep Suh in Detroit.
The best way to do that, obviously, is with a long-term deal that would give the Lions two pillars in Suh and Ziggy Ansah, whose own contract extension isn't too far down the road, to build their defense around for years to come.
If it takes Watt money to get it done, so be it. If it takes a little more, as Corry suggests, that's fine, too. And if Suh insists on testing free agency, the Lions, if they have the cap room, should use the franchise tag — which they haven't ruled out, even at the excessive cost of $26.9 million (Suh will count another $9.7 against the cap regardless of where he plays next year due to previous signing bonus prorations) — to extend their exclusive negotiating window until July rather than risk some team with more space steal their star.
Suh is the best run defender in football, an utterly destructive force who makes everyone around him better because of the constant double-teams he draws.
"He's one of those guys you can't replace," defensive end Darryl Tapp said. "Hopefully it doesn't get to that situation. Hopefully the people upstairs can make things happen, but it'd be a huge blow to this entire team (to lose him) just cause of how much everybody on this team respects what he does and the person that he is."
Caldwell has made it clear he respects Suh, too, as a player, a person and a businessman. And when asked what the Lions defense would look like without Suh, now and in the future, Caldwell wouldn't even entertain the thought.
"I'm not certain," he said. "And I certainly don't want to find out."
