Calvin Johnson, Ndamukong Suh

Years of terrible records netted the Detroit Lions a pair of superstars in the NFL draft, but years of clunky cap management ultimately cost the team one of those players.

(AP File Photo)

The Detroit Lions are losing Ndamukong Suh to the Miami Dolphins and there's a rush to assign blame. On one side you have the loyalty police, who insist Suh is being greedy. For others, it falls on Detroit's front office, which overestimated its ability to work out a long-term deal, all while giving Suh the necessary leverage to make it to free agency following multiple contract restructures.

You can't argue the facts. By restructuring Suh's contract twice, the Lions couldn't afford to franchise the All-Pro defensive tackle at the ridiculous cost of $26.9 million. From there, it left the door open to get outbid by the Dolphins.

Detroit's salary cap issues date back long before the team asked Suh to restructure his contract (twice), even before the Lions got saddled with three monstrous rookie contracts under the old collective bargaining agreement.

The problems date back to reviled former general manager Matt Millen.

How far back do you want to go? There are the dead money cap hits the team ate after trading quarterback Joey Harrington and cutting wide receivers Charles Rogers and Mike Williams. All three were high draft picks who never came close to meeting expectations.

But we'll start in 2008.

Entering that now infamous campaign, which saw the Lions finish the season 0-16, the team had a staggering $15.2 million in dead money, more than 13 percent of the $116 million cap.

Millen was fired early that season and replaced by the team of Martin Mayhew and Tom Lewand. The duo spent the following offseason purging the roster of Millen's mistakes. The team ate significant cap hits in 2009 by releasing Brian Kelly, Leigh Bodden, Michael Gaines, Travis Fisher and Mike Furrey for their multi-year contracts, the majority of which were inked the previous offseason. The Lions also swallowed a huge hit trading defensive tackle Cory Redding to Seattle for linebacker Julian Peterson.

With the books in better shape entering 2010, the new front office got aggressive in their efforts to turn the franchise around. The team inked defensive end Kyle Vanden Bosch and wide receiver Nate Burleson to long-term deals and swung trades for Chris Houston, Corey Williams, Rob Sims, Shaun Hill, Tony Scheffler and Lawrence Jackson.

Even with hindsight, each of those moves were solid additions. Those veterans helped ignite a culture change.

But because the team was still awful in 2009, Detroit found itself selecting at the top of the draft once again. For the third time in four years, the Lions held a top-two pick, and under the previous collective bargaining agreement, those salaries were out of control.

As the team started to trend in the right direction, winning six games, including the final four in 2010, Detroit first turned to aggressively restructuring contracts to bolster the roster.

Matthew Stafford and Vanden Bosch re-did their deals during the 2011 offseason, clearing up room for the team to add Justin Durant, Stephen Tulloch and Eric Wright. The result was another step forward for the organization, qualifying for the playoffs for the first time in 12 years.

The restructures continued in 2012, but this time out of necessity. The team was significantly over the cap as Calvin Johnson, Suh and Stafford's rookie deals strangled the franchise.

Johnson had reached the final year of his contract and was set to have a cap hit of more than $22 million. The team eventually agreed to a long-term deal with the superstar receiver, reducing the immediate hit with nearly $50 million in guaranteed money.

The downside was the Lions were unable to upgrade their roster that offseason. Sure, the team retained Tulloch and Jeff Backus, plus franchised defensive end Cliff Avril, but failed to add any meaningful new talent in free agency.

The season was a flop ending with a 4-12 finish.

Seeing the damage of roster complacency, Detroit again leaned on restructures to create cap space in 2013. Re-working the deals of Suh and Johnson, the Lions cleared enough space to sign Glover Quin, Reggie Bush, Jason Jones and C.J. Mosley to multi-year deals, while re-upping with Houston for another five years (a rare free agency blunder by Mayhew).

Dead money started to hurt the Lions again in 2013, following the release of Vanden Bosch and notable draft busts Jahvid Best and Titus Young. In total, the Lions had nearly $9 million tied up in players no longer on the roster.

By 2014, Suh's contract had reached the point where his cap hit exceeded $22 million, with another $9.7 million in dead money slotted for 2015, regardless of whether the team re-signed him. Unlike with Johnson, the team was never able to work out a long-term extension to solve the problem. Now Suh is headed for Miami.

The 2015 cap situation still isn't particularly bright. The Lions currently have more dead money than any other team with $17.4 million. For perspective, the league average is $6.8 million.

In 2016, if the Lions retain both Stafford and Johnson, they're set to combine for a cap hit exceeding $46 million, a number that will only increase if Detroit restructures one of their deals to sign free agents this offseason.

What can we conclude from all these numbers? Well, the Lions are still suffering from a combination of Millen's failures, the old collective bargaining agreement and the constant need to win now to protect current jobs.

Millen sabotaged the Lions' cap with poor drafting, poor free-agent signings and building a roster that consistently failed leading to a slew of cost-prohibitive draft picks.

Mayhew and Lewand perpetuated the problems, not with poor roster building, but a reliance on restructures to consistently add and keep talent on a team previously devoid of it.

If the Lions never restructure contracts, the team could probably never afford to sign talented players such as Tulloch, Quin or Tate, relying even more on the draft to build the team's foundation. It's also likely the team doesn't make the playoffs in 2011 and 2014.

Suh's bittersweet departure now clears the way for a more fiscally responsible future for the organization. Not that that is going to make anyone feel better.

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