Detroit Lions: The 11 Worst-Case Free Agency Scenarios for Them Post-Lockout

Every Detroit Lions fan knows how easy it is to look for the best-case scenario.

And as the NFL prepares to open for business once again, free agency will mark the advent of those absurd "best-case" scenarios we've all become so accustomed to hearing from those who have lost touch with reality.

"What we need to do is sign Asomugha and Joseph for the corners, Tulloch for middle linebacker, move Levy outside and pull off a trade for Jerod Mayo. Perfect, right?"

Sure, buddy. While we're at it, let's sign Barry Sanders out of retirement and bring Lou Creekmur back from the dead. Equally likely scenario.

Whatever the projected scenario, I think I've been perfectly clear regarding the type of free agency period I expect the Lions to have. Most likely, it will be subtle but effective.

But before the Lions make good moves in free agency, they have to avoid making bad ones. In some cases, that involves taking action. In others, it involves explicitly not taking action.

Regardless of what steps the Lions must take to avoid them, here are the 11 worst possible outcomes for the Lions in this unusual free-agency period.

Letting Chris Houston Walk

This is the most obvious—and least desired—pitfall the Lions face in free agency.

Chris Houston, acquired from Atlanta for a sixth-round pick and a bag of peanuts, showed the kind of improvement last year that makes teams wonder if he's about to come into his prime as a legitimate top corner.

Barring that, he could be one of the league's best No. 2 corners.

Wherever Houston lands on the depth chart, Detroit wants him back. Houston, however, wants to test free agency.

There are two things that this could mean. One is that he just wants to pull in offers from other teams to drive his price up. The other is that he wants to pull in offers to get out of Detroit.

Now, if Detroit ends up the high bidder for his services, I can't see him skipping town for less money just to leave a team that is poised to contend for a Super Bowl within the next five years. That means he probably just wants to make sure he gets paid.

Problem is, Houston is a speedy cover cornerback, and speedy cover corners get paid. Even the average ones.

The Lions have to hope Houston doesn't get bid up too much on the open market because then they're stuck with the equally undesirable options of letting him walk or overpaying to keep him.

And speaking of overpaying for people...

Signing Nnamdi Asomugha

That's right, I'm taking a stand on this. We've had the discussion before on Nnamdi to Detroit and to great response.

But previously, I tried being diplomatic by admitting that Nnamdi Asomugha would make the Lions better.

And he would. At the cornerback position. For about two years. Thereafter, just about every other position will be substantially worse.

Why do I say this? Because Asomugha's going to go into his inevitable veteran decline in two years? No. At least, probably not.

The thing even more concerning than the possibility of Asomugha starting to decline halfway through a gigantic contract is the strain said contract would put on the Lions' salary cap.

First of all, Asomugha is rumored to pull down a contract for about $19 million a year (for reference, Chris Houston made about $750,000 last year). The Lions are projected to have roughly $12 million or so when the salary cap is reinstated. Strike one.

Also, even if the Lions found a way to get Nnamdi in under the salary cap, you might as well line up Cliff Avril, Calvin Johnson and Matthew Stafford right now and decide which two you want to keep.

Those guys are all most likely going to demand monstrous new contracts in the next few years, and we're talking about paying a 30-year-old  free-agent cornerback instead of some of the cornerstones of the team.

That's not how winners run football teams. Ever. Period.

Getting Zero Impact from UDFAs

When the lockout lifts, one of the first groups of players to get a look is the undrafted free agent pool. These poor kids have had to sit the entirety of the draft without hearing their names called, then another three months waiting for the labor situation to get sorted out.

Soon, it will finally be their time to shine.

Hopefully.

Lions GM Martin Mayhew has proven effective at picking diamonds from the rough, and there is no doubt he will go to the UDFA well to find more players like Aaron Berry and Randy Phillips this year.

Problem is, there's no guarantee he finds more players like Aaron Berry and Randy Phillips. Granted, guys like Mark Herzlich, Kendric Burney and Kris O'Dowd should draw a fair amount of attention, and Mayhew will spend his due diligence sifting through the pile of players just looking for a shot.

But signing UDFAs is even more of a long-odds crapshoot than the draft itself. Even if the Lions sign all their targets and bring them to training camp, it's entirely possible none of them even hang around on the practice squad.

For the Lions, who have used UDFAs as a powerful tool in building the team, failing to get any impact from this year's class would be damaging. The Lions may not feel it in 2011, but it will sting in the long run.

Spending Too Much to Extend Jeff Backus

In the last decade, perhaps no player has divided public opinion quite as much as Jeff Backus.

For every fan who thinks he's a Pro Bowler, there's another who thinks he's a bum and should be cut. That discussion is likely to begin anew as the Lions (most likely) discuss a possible contract extension with Backus.

This one is tricky, because fans on both extremes are wrong. The Backus defenders are likely to be on the "pay that man" side, while detractors are likely to advocate letting the door hit him in the butt on the way out.

In reality, the Lions should pay Backus. They should pay him good money, too—for a backup lineman.

Because if the Lions re-sign him, that's all Backus should be.

It's not that Backus is bad now—he's really not. Overpaid, absolutely. Straight-up bad, no. He is one of the best-paid linemen in football but is consistently one of the most average performing. His free-agency year is the Lions' chance to correct this.

The problem is going to be that Backus' overall performance has peaked in the last two seasons, despite him being in what should be his declining years.

The Lions want to keep him, and as they should. But they don't need to give him a massive contract as a lifetime achievement award when he turns 35.

Hopefully, the Lions are able to leverage Backus' desire to negotiate a reasonable contract with him. Paying him too much and paying him nothing are equally undesirable outcomes.

Letting Drew Stanton Walk

In the best-case scenario, it doesn't matter one bit who the Lions' second-string quarterback is, much less their third.

But this is about worst-case scenarios. And under the new CBA, Stanton is probably an unrestricted free agent.

It's easy to hope for that but difficult to guarantee. The Lions need a backup quarterback, and Shaun Hill is only signed through 2011.

Hill performed so well last year in relief of Stafford, he could easily become trade bait for a team looking for a stopgap signal-caller. Oddly enough, he would be absolutely perfect right now for San Francisco or Minnesota—his two former teams.

Of course, the Lions are only going to entertain that notion if they have somebody they can trust ready to step in and take over Hill's spot.

Stanton got enough playing time in 2010 to prove he can be an effective (if slightly erratic and inaccurate) backup quarterback.

More importantly, Stanton actually wants to stay. I don't know exactly why, since he'd probably make more money and get better treatment (especially in terms of his depth chart position) elsewhere.

But if he wants to stay and the price is right, the Lions would be foolish not to keep hold of the quarterback most familiar with the team.

Trading Sammie Hill

Is that the kind of face you want to call into your office and tell you've traded him?

Or is that the kind of face you want to send into an opposing offensive line?

After the Lions drafted Nick Fairley, there was lots of talk about the "odd man out" on the line or "trading from a team strength."

Everyone assumed that meant Sammie Hill.

Everyone conveniently forgot that Andre Fluellen is the odd man out and that the "team strength" becomes much weaker when the rotation goes back to three players.

Remember, the whole point to Fairley being drafted was to take some of the pressure off Ndamukong Suh, who played more snaps than any defensive lineman in football last year.

Jim Schwartz wants to be able to rotate all four of his defensive tackles in and out as needed. This is a core principle of his defense. Last year, he wasn't able to do that because Fluellen was one of his tackles.

Consequently, Corey Williams and Hill rotated around, and Suh played over 90 percent of the defensive snaps.

Suh didn't wear down at all under the heavy workload, but rest assured he will rapidly deteriorate over time if the Lions don't lighten his workload.

Hill is as big a part of that as Fairley, and to get rid of either of them is to send the entire unit right back to square one.

Jumping for Free Agents Too Early

In 2010, the Detroit Lions were the first to jump in free agency. Jim Schwartz had a target on Kyle Vanden Bosch's back so big, he practically stalked the man the night free agency began.

This year, free agency will begin in a frenzy as teams attempt to sign new players and start training camps almost concurrently. Panic will be widespread and thinly veiled.

The Lions will feel a strong temptation to join the frenzy, but it's a bad idea. Remember, free agents are also freaking out about it being July and them being without a team, especially if they're still that way after the first wave of signings.

The kinds of free agents the Lions are likely to court should be fairly plentiful even after the first signing wave and as those players become more desperate to find jobs for the season, their prices will come down.

Sure, they might miss a week or two of training camp, but some of the Lions' most effective players in 2010 weren't even in training camp.

It's shrewd, maybe even a little bit evil, but it's smart. If the Lions play this free agency with patience, they should come away with players they want, at the prices they want.

All they have to do is wait for those players to get desperate enough to slap themselves with the clearance tags.

Failing to Extend Cliff Avril's Contract

Matt Millen must have made a mistake. How else could he have stumbled on a potentially dominant defensive end in the third round of the draft?

However it happened, Cliff Avril is the Lions' best edge rusher, and that fetches big money on the open market.

That's why he can't be allowed to get that far.

Avril is going to get paid, no question. By all accounts, Avril wants to stay, and the Lions want to keep him, so why not make it happen before his services get bid up?

Avril is a liability in the run game, but he's also young. He can improve that aspect of his game while he continues to smack opposing quarterbacks into the turf.

Signing Another Tight End

I'm not going to say that the Tony Scheffler trade was a bad one. The Lions had no further use for Ernie Sims, and they needed a receiving tight end to complement Brandon Pettigrew.

Scheffler, though he had a minor statistical impact on the team, was certainly an upgrade over Will Heller, especially where receiving is concerned.

Better yet, they took the presumable odd man out, Dan Gronkowski, and traded him to Denver for Alphonso Smith, who turned out to be a starter.

So the end result of the deal was the Lions traded a starting linebacker for a second-string tight end (who got as much playing time as some starters), then traded their last-string tight end for a starting cornerback.

That's great. I'm happy with the outcome of those roster moves.

That said, tight end is one of the only areas of the team that I don't want to see any movement. Want to bring in a UDFA tight end and see what he's about? Fine. 

But don't forget that Jake Nordin and Joe Jon Finley are sitting around waiting for a shot too.

Martin Mayhew is rarely willing to concede that a unit can't be upgraded. That was made clear when he used his first-round draft pick to pick a defensive lineman, supplementing the team's greatest strength.

But one thing Martin Mayhew has not had to do much of is worry about the salary cap. In 2009, he dumped all of his salary, and in 2010, there was no cap. He can't sign infinite free agents, so he does, to an extent, need to worry about position.

And tight end, as well as defensive tackle, is in good shape for now. The focus needs to be elsewhere.

Not Signing a Veteran Linebacker

This may seem counterintuitive to my usual take on things, but hear me out.

Every Lions unit has two things. One is youth and upside. The other is at least one veteran presence.

Don't believe me? I'll run down the list.

QB: Shaun Hill

RB: Maurice Morris

WR: Nate Burleson

TE: Will Heller

OL: Most of them

DT: Corey Williams

DE: Kyle Vanden Bosch

CB: Nathan Vasher

S: Erik Coleman

Notice something missing in there? Right, the exception is linebacker. Until recently, the veteran was Julian Peterson, but he's gone now. And no, Bobby Carpenter doesn't count.

Another common thread through these players is that they all play a significant role, but none of them are extravagantly paid superstars. Which (once again) rules out the possibility of the mystery man being Stephen Tulloch.

So does this look like a coincidence or a trend?

It's almost certainly a trend, which hints the Lions will be on the market for an effective-yet-affordable veteran linebacker.

I don't know that not signing one will necessarily leave the team in ruin, but it's obvious the Lions want a veteran to stabilize each unit, so it seems silly to think that they would just ignore the linebacker position.

Falling Asleep on Waivers

Last year, as the majority of the NFL yawned at final cuts from training camp, Martin Mayhew, Jim Schwartz and the Lions' scouting team kept eagle eyes on the NFL waiver wire.

As a result, the Lions stumbled upon Alphonso Smith, Stefan Logan and John Wendling.

Smith could be a 16-game starter at cornerback this year, while Logan and Wendling were both Pro Bowl reserves on special teams in 2010.

The Lions found that kind of talent, just by picking through other teams' trash.

In a sense, sifting through cuts and waivers is even more important than signing UDFAs. And so far, Mayhew has been very, very good at both.

There's no reason to believe Mayhew won't scour the waiver wire like always, which is another reason not to panic if the Lions don't make a big splash in free agency.

Their biggest pickup this offseason might just be another square peg.