Amon-Ra St. Brown will be in Detroit for a long time. The first-team All-Pro wide receiver is one of the central building blocks for the reigning NFC North champions.
St. Brown is entering the final year of his rookie contract. As the 102nd pick in the 2021 NFL draft, the wideout from USC signed a four-year deal worth $4.265 million, a predetermined amount based on the league’s collective bargaining agreement. His next contract will pay St. Brown more than that total in every season.
The Lions and St. Brown should be working on that next deal already. It’s customary for a player of his status to get an extension before the final year of the deal expires, and he would hit free agency.
How much will St. Brown get in a contract extension?
Much like real estate values, player contracts typically work off a baseline comparison to similar entities. It’s as much about timing as finding close statistical comparisons, too. And much like real estate, there are websites that try to approximate those values.
The two most prominent NFL player market valuation sites are Over the Cap and Spotrac. Those two are pretty close in terms of projecting St. Brown’s value:
Sportac: $26.3 million per year
Over the Cap: $25.4 million per year
That’s lifting St. Brown into the realm of D.K. Metcalf and A.J. Brown, salary-wise. Metcalf’s three-year, $72 million contract extension also provided a $30 million signing bonus and 80 percent ($58.2M) of the total value fully guaranteed.
Brown took an extra year to get his four-year, $100 million extension with the Eagles. His deal included a $23.2 million signing bonus and 57.2 percent guaranteed. The extra year of contract security and salary gets offset for the team by the lower bonus and guaranteed money upfront.
That’s where the ball rolls into St. Brown’s court. He will need to prioritize whether he wants a higher percentage of the deal guaranteed or a longer deal that would give him more long-term security. At 24 years old, St. Brown is just hitting his athletic prime.
Two hypothetical deals the Lions could offer:
Four years, $102.5 million, $60 million fully guaranteed, $32.5 million signing bonus.
Three years, $73.5 million, $59.5 million fully guaranteed, $34 million signing bonus
The way the Lions have typically structured contracts with COO Mike Disner as the team’s chief negotiator, a void year or two to spread out the cap hit seems likely part of any deal.
It’s not a salary cap killer, not immediately, anyway. Brown’s $100 million extension in 2022 cost the Eagles just $5.6 million and $8.3 million in salary cap hits in the last two seasons, respectively; it balloons to over $41 million in 2026–and that’s with two void years at the end of the deal. Read as: Brown won’t be playing with that contract in Philadelphia in 2026.
Expect much the same with St. Brown and the last year of his extension in Detroit. Agents and teams design that final year to be redone prior to that time, be it another extension or a trade to a different team that will renegotiate.