The Detroit Lions announced on Friday that they\u2019ve released veteran defensive tackle Levi Onwuzurike from the 53-man roster and rookie defensive lineman Tyre West from the practice squad.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a bit of a surprise with Onwuzurike, who was the team\u2019s second-round pick in 2021. The defensive lineman has struggled with injuries for most of his NFL career\u2014a back injury for the first few years before an ACL injury zapped all of his 2025 season. In total, he\u2019s played in just 42 games and made only 10 starts. Over that time, he\u2019s tallied 68 tackles, 3.5 sacks, and 16 quarterback hits. That said, his 2024 season was very promising: 28 tackles, 1.5 sacks, 45 pressures, and 13 quarterback hits.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear why the Lions made the move, but there is a rational explanation that could involve Onwuzurike coming back to the team as soon as next week\u2014or even on Saturday on the practice squad. There is a rule in the NFL that any veteran who is on the Week 1 53-man roster will see his annual salary become fully guaranteed for the year. Given Onwuzurike\u2019s injury history, the Lions may have wanted to avoid this, and therefore will add him back to the 53-man roster next week. There\u2019s even a chance Onwuzurike signs to the practice squad on Saturday, gets elevated using one of the team\u2019s two standard elevations, and plays on Sunday vs. the Saints without having his salary guaranteed.<\/p>\n
Or, it\u2019s entirely possible the Lions have opted to move on. We\u2019ll have to wait and see.<\/p>\n
As for West, he struggled to make an impact during training camp and barely got any playing time during the preseason. It\u2019s possible the Lions bring him back to further his development after some roster shuffling.<\/p>\n
Detroit will likely have one more set of roster moves before Sunday\u2019s game against the New Orleans Saints. On Saturday, the team will announce any more moves and practice squad elevations by 4 p.m. ET.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Detroit Lions announced on Friday that they\u2019ve released veteran defensive tackle Levi Onwuzurike from the 53-man roster…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":844856,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[4992,14290,349,99],"class_list":["post-844855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-detroit-lions-news","tag-detroit-lions-transactions","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844855","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=844855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/844856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}