Alim McNeill took a big step in his career progress in 2023. The third-year defensive tackle reshaped his body to become more of a lean, mean fighting machine on the Detroit Lions interior.
Now McNeill is entering the final year of his rookie contract, a four-year deal that paid him just under $5.2 million as the No. 72 overall pick in the 2021 NFL draft. McNeill is due $1.33 million in salary in 2024 and a total cap hit of $1.63 million.
He’s going to make a lot more than that in his next contract, and that could be coming soon in the form of a contract extension.
How much might McNeill get in a new contract?
Just like in real estate, NFL free agent values are closely based on comparable players and contracts. In McNeill’s case, that’s a little tougher than some other positions.
Over The Cap came to a valuation of $8.852 million for McNeill. That annual salary range would place McNeill 25th in the league for defensive tackles, sandwiched between Sheldon Rankins and Roy Robertson-Harris. Rankins is a good on-field player comp for McNeill as a player who emerged as a much better pass rusher and all-around player in 2023.
For contractual purposes, Rankins doesn’t work so well as a comp. He signed a 1-year deal with the Texans for $9.75 million, which was heavy on the signing bonus of $7 million. The Texans tacked on three void years to make it more cap-friendly. At 29 years old and coming off a 5-year run as a rotational player with the Saints and Jets, Rankins wasn’t loaded with the upside the 23-year-old McNeill offers Detroit long-term.
McNeill’s emergence at his age and his value to the Lions, who have an urgent need to get better on the defensive interior around McNeill, probably lay waste to that contract value. McNeill’s representation can argue–with credibility–that McNeill is on the verge of being a top-10 defensive tackle.
So escalate up the salary ladder to the fringe of the top 10 DTs. That’s the realm of players like Kenny Clark, Grady Jarrett and Ed Oliver. All of them earn right around $17 million per season, on average. And that’s a figure that seems too rich for McNeill at this point, though not exorbitantly enough that his agent couldn’t aspirationally ask for it.
Ed Oliver is a good base data point to work off. He signed a four-year, $68 million extension ($17 million per season) with the Bills last June. He got a signing bonus of $14.75 million and a full $45.27 million (67 percent) guaranteed. At that time, Oliver was 24 and coming off a 2022 campaign where he recorded 2.5 sacks and 34 tackles in 13 games. McNeill in 2023: 5.0 sacks and 32 tackles in 13 games.
Oliver had a longer track record of production as a first-round pick by Buffalo in 2019. He averaged four sacks, 9.3 TFLs and 38 tackles a year in his first three seasons prior to the ’22 effort. McNeill posted an average of 1.5 sacks, five TFLs and 40 tackles in his first two years.
A compromised contract for McNeill in the range of $15-$16 million a year. The tradeoffs between longer-term security at a lower guaranteed rate versus a higher percentage of the total deal guaranteed but with less time commitment by the team comes into play in the negotiations here.
If McNeill wants more overall money and is willing to take less guaranteed money and signing bonus, a 5-year, $78 million deal with $35 million guaranteed (45 percent) seems to be in the right ballpark. Tack a void year or two onto there for the Lions to amortize the contract over a longer period, too.
If McNeill wants more guaranteed money, an extension worth $48.5 million over three years with $31.5 million (65 percent) guaranteed look more appealing. That would put him in line for another contract in 2026 when McNeill will still be just 26 years old, and that could very well hold more value than the longer-term security of a more extended deal right now. That’s up to McNeill and his idea of his career earnings map.