HEADLINES

Reggie Bush

Lions Restructure Reggie Bush’s Contract

September 19th, 2014 at 12:16pm CST by Luke Adams

FRIDAY, 12:16pm: The Lions converted about $2.333MM of Bush’s 2014 base salary to a signing bonus, according to Pelissero (via Twitter). That means the move created somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.55MM in ’14 cap room for the team.

THURSDAY, 2:42pm: The Lions have reworked the contract of running back Reggie Bush in order to create some cap space, according to Tom Pelissero of USA Today (via Twitter). Josh Katzenstein of the Detroit News confirms Pelissero’s report, adding (via Twitter) that it’s a simple restructure, with a portion of Bush’s 2014 base salary having been converted to a signing bonus.

The exact figures on Bush’s restructure aren’t clear — Pelissero notes that Bush is making $3.5MM this year, but that was the veteran running back’s base salary prior to the move. In any case, the cap savings will be minimal. Even if Bush’s salary was reduced to the minimum, with the difference being converted into a prorated bonus, it would create less than $2MM in cap savings.

Nonetheless, even that modest a figure should be valuable for the Lions, who don’t have a ton of breathing room under the cap, according to Over The Cap’s figures. The restructuring likely isn’t a precursor to a major signing or extension, but rather will allow the team to add reinforcements as necessary throughout the season.

Bush remains under contract with the Lions through 2016.

Lions Notes: Bush, Fluellen, Suh

August 4th, 2014 at 8:52am CST by Luke Adams

The big news story out of Lions training camp so far has been the team’s decision to table extension talks with star defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh until after the season. Still, Suh isn’t the only Detroit player worth watching this summer. Here’s the latest on a few of his teammates:

  • Back in January, Reggie Bush indicated that he hopes to play in the NFL “at least another five years,” but his latest comments suggest that his goal is actually to stick around longer than that. According to Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press, the veteran running back would love to play 15 total seasons, which would mean playing for another seven years. “I don’t want to put a timetable on it because I don’t know,” Bush said. “I don’t know if it’s five (years), four, three, six. I’m not sure. But I know if I get to 15 that’ll be a blessing.”
  • Since entering the league as a third-round pick in 2008, Andre Fluellen has played defensive tackle, but as Birkett writes in a separate Free Press article, the 29-year-old has shifted to defensive end this year in the hopes of extending his career.
  • Kyle Meinke of MLive.com fields readers’ questions in his latest mailbag, addressing Suh’s contract situation, discussing the secondary, and identifying the club’s standout rookies so far.

Reggie Bush Wants To Retire As Lion

May 22nd, 2014 at 8:43am CST by Luke Adams

At age 29, the most productive years of Reggie Bush‘s career may be behind him rather than ahead of him, but we heard earlier this year that the running back still hopes to play several more seasons. Still, while Bush would like to extend his career beyond his current contract with the Lions, which expires in 2016, that doesn’t mean he wants to leave Detroit. Speaking to Erik Kuselias of Pro Football Talk, the former second overall pick indicated that he’d like to spend his remaining seasons with the Lions.

“I want to stay here, I want to retire here and I’d love to retire as a Detroit Lion,” Bush said. “I don’t want to bounce around from city to city, from team to team. I think I have something good going here, have been really getting to know the city over the past year and just really looking forward to bringing a championship here someday and making history.”

NFL players on long-term contracts often don’t play out their entire deals, particularly if they’re running backs whose contracts run through their age 31 season. Bush also may have to assume a slightly lesser role in the Lions’ offense in the coming years, now that the club has re-signed young playmaker Joique Bell to complement him in the backfield. If Bush hopes to play five more seasons, as he suggested in January, and to retire as a Lion, reductions in both pay and playing time figure to be in the cards at some point.

For now, Bush will likely be focused on building upon a 2013 campaign that saw him set a career high in total offensive yards from scrimmage (1,512) despite appearing in just 14 contests.

Extra Points: Suh, Hester, Talib

March 9th, 2014 at 9:15am CST by Peter Sowards

Ndamukong Suh‘s cap number in 2014 is $22.4MM — that’s nearly 17% of the $133MM salary cap.

However, DetroitLions.com Senior Writer Tim Twentyman said this should not hamstring the team’s efforts to be active in free agency. With less cap space last year entering free agency than they have this year, Twentyman writes that Detroit was still able to land Reggie Bush, Glover Quin and Jason Jones on free agency’s opening day.

“The fact we won’t have an extension done with Ndamukong before free agency begins doesn’t affect that plan one bit,” Lions team president Tom Lewand said. “It doesn’t affect our valuation of the free agents, it doesn’t affect what our projection of our cap situation is going forward, and it doesn’t affect how we project eventually working an extension with Ndamukong out at some point in time.”

Twentyman doesn’t expect a re-done deal by the start of free agency, despite Suh’s recent signing of CAA Sports agent Jimmy Sexton.

More notes from the second day of the legal tampering period…

NFC Notes: Wharton, Panthers, Lions, Saints

February 27th, 2014 at 10:47am CST by Luke Adams

The Panthers have already lost one starting lineman to retirement this week, when longtime left tackle Jordan Gross called it a career. Now, left guard Travelle Wharton tells Joseph Person of the Charlotte Observer that he’s not 100% sure about his future either. However, it sounds like if he keeps playing, the free agent lineman wants to do so in Carolina.

“I love it here in Charlotte. This is where we want to live,” Wharton said. “If there’s going to be a next year, we have to sit down and talk about it.”

Here’s more on the Panthers and a couple other NFC teams:

  • Steve Smith‘s age (35 in May) and contract ($9MM in dead money, three years remaining) make him a tricky case for the Panthers, as Jason Fitzgerald explores in his latest piece at OverTheCap.com. Fitzgerald thinks it makes sense for the two sides to continue their relationship, but makes some suggestions for how to make the veteran receiver’s contract more tenable for the club.
  • When the Lions inked Matthew Stafford to his long-term contract extension last summer, the team agreed to defer the payment of $17.5MM of his $27.5MM signing bonus. That bill has come due, according to Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press, who says the team will pay Stafford the remainder of the bonus this Friday. Glover Quin, Reggie Bush, and Jason Jones will also receive deferred bonus money within the next few weeks, but the lump-sum payments won’t alter the team’s cap outlook.
  • Running back Mikel Leshoure expressed a desire for a bigger role, either in Detroit or elsewhere, and it looks like he may receive that opportunity with the Lions, writes Kyle Meinke of MLive.com.
  • Add linebacker and special teams player Ramon Humber to the growing list of pending Saints free agents who have had early discussions with the club about a new deal, writes Ramon Antonio Vargas of The Advocate.

NFC Notes: Bush, Lions, Packers, Falcons

January 31st, 2014 at 3:57pm CST by Luke Adams

It may not seem like long ago that Reggie Bush was starring at USC, but the running back’s first season in Detroit was his eighth overall in the NFL. Still, as Bush prepares to turn 29 in a few weeks, he tells Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk that he hopes to play “at least another five years” before calling it a career. Bush’s current contract with the Lions runs through the 2016 season, so even if he plays out those three years, his ideal scenario would have him signing at least one more deal before retiring.

Here are a few more Friday updates from around the NFC, as the Super Bowl inches closer:

  • The Lions will be facing a decision this offseason on safety Louis Delmas, who started all 16 games for the team, but will have a $6.5MM cap number for 2014. says Michael Rothstein of ESPN.com.
  • Safety will also be an area of concern for the Packers this spring, according to ESPN.com’s Rob Demovsky, who writes there’s “probably no higher priority in the draft” for Green Bay.
  • Falcons GM Thomas Dimitroff tells Vaughn McClure of ESPN.com that he’s only focusing on a select few positions in free agency, with the offensive and defensive lines among the postitions the club will address.
  • ESPN.com’s Pat Yasinskas believes that locking up linebacker Lavonte David and defensive tackle Gerald McCoy to long-term deals should be among the top items on the offseason checklist for new Buccaneers GM Jason Licht.