AP

The Lions are 1-6, and and as a practical matter done. It makes them a prime candidate to consider trading off players who may not be with the team in 2016, in the hopes of making things better, sooner than later.

But there’s a clear impediment for teams that have an opportunity to use the trade deadline as a way to improve next year and beyond. Those teams have to be run by folks who aren’t under pressure to win now.

Lions General Manager Martin Mayhew apparently is, because (via Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press) Mayhew said the Lions will be “buyers” and not “sellers” at the trade deadline. It’s unclear who the Lions would buy and what they would trade when making purchases.

One potential item for barter could be receiver Calvin Johnson. But Mayhew said that the Lions have “no interest” in trading a player whose cap number shoots to more than $24 million in 2016 — and who would trigger a cap charge of $12.9 million in 2016 if he were traded now.

Mayhew’s comments came at a session with reporters in London, during which Mayhew “definitely sounded like a man fighting to keep his job,” in Birkett’s assessment. And that’s no surprise; Mayhew got the gig in 2009, despite being the right-hand man of Matt Millen, one of the worst General Managers in the history of general managing. Mayhew has since presided over a franchise that has been to the playoffs twice, but that continues to generate a strong sense of underachievement.

On Friday, Mayhew declined to address how changes within the Ford family have altered his job. With family matriarch Martha Ford asserting herself more and more, if could be that Mayhew ends up without a job by the end of the season.