{"id":668368,"date":"2026-05-27T16:27:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T16:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/668368\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T16:27:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T16:27:09","slug":"jack-campbell-contract-details-full-breakdown-of-cap-hits-future-outs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/668368\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack Campbell contract details: Full breakdown of cap hits, future outs"},"content":{"rendered":"

A week after the Detroit Lions announced that 2023 first-round pick Jack Campbell signed a four-year extension, the full details of the deal appear to be out. Tuesday night, Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press provided partial details of the $81 million contract, and OverTheCap filled out the rest of the details by Wednesday morning<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Like most of the Lions\u2019 recent extensions, Campbell\u2019s deal is heavily reliant upon option bonuses. As a quick reminder, here\u2019s how option bonuses work. If a player is still on the roster on the deadline of an option bonus, they earn said bonus and it becomes guaranteed money: that\u2019s the advantage for the player. For the team, instead of using a high salary number\u2014which hits the salary cap all in one year\u2014they use the option bonus, which spreads evenly over the remainder of the contract, with a maximum of a five-year split. So if you were to give a player a $20 million salary, that costs you $20 million against the cap. But if you offer a $20 million option bonus instead, it costs the same in cash, but if there\u2019s five years remaining on the contract, that $20 million only costs $4 million per year against the salary cap.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a way to keep salaries and cap hits low in early years of the contract, but it also pushes the majority of cap into the future.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s get into the nitty-gritty of Campbell\u2019s contract, and show how it works for the Lions linebacker.<\/p>\n

2031 \u2014 Contract automatically voids<\/p>\n

As you can see in the chart above, there is no real \u201cout\u201d in Campbell\u2019s contract. Every year, if the Lions cut Campbell loose, he\u2019ll actually cost the Lions more in dead cap that year than the cap hit for that season. Of course, you\u2019d be saving money down the line by avoiding future option bonuses, but the way this contract is structured, it certainly seems like Detroit is banking on Campbell playing through the entirety of this contract.<\/p>\n

In fact, there are several clues along the way that Detroit is planning on a second extension. First is that big $15.15 million salary in 2029. That gives the Lions some flexibility to restructure that contract and kick some cap hit into the future by turning some of that into a signing bonus and prorating it into future years.<\/p>\n

But the main reason is that $25 million dead cap figure in 2031. If the Lions don\u2019t extend Campbell, they\u2019ll have to take on all of the remaining prorated bonuses (the cells in red), as they accelerate to 2031 when the contract voids. A $25 million cap hit when the player is gone would be a tough pill to swallow. However, if Detroit opts to extend Campbell again, all of those prorations in the red cells above can stay in those future years, and the Lions can begin the process all over again in kicking money even further into the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A week after the Detroit Lions announced that 2023 first-round pick Jack Campbell signed a four-year extension, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668369,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[189513,2131,349,99],"class_list":["post-668368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-detroit-lions-contracts-and-salary-cap","tag-detroit-lions-analysis","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}