Rod Wood Offers Major Contract Updates, Brags About Player Treatment

Detroit Lions team president Rod Wood addresses contract extension talks with key players.

President and CEO Rod Wood walks the sidelines during the Detroit Lions training camp | Kimberly P. Mitchell / USA TODAY NETWORK

The Detroit Lions may not necessarily need to see defensive back Brian Branch and tight end Sam Laporta play in their next regular season game before inking them to a long-term contract extension.

Team president Rod Wood recently spoke at the Detroit Economic Club during a pre-draft event and discussed the potential for key players earning a contract extension this offseason.

Both Branch and LaPorta are working their way back from injury, but the team is still intending on rewarding productive players who were added to the roster via the draft.

"Once we get an assessment of how they’re doing, it doesn’t mean they have to play before we would do an extension," Wood said, via the Detroit Free Press. "We had a similar situation with Hutch a couple years ago, with him coming off his injury, and we were in active discussions with him beginning in training camp but it took some time because it’s a big deal. These may take time cause they’re big deals, not because of the injury.

"But, we’ll look at their health and that’ll be factored into how we approach it but the plan is now to try and keep all these guys that we’ve drafted."

Wood did not reveal if those deals or any other extensions would be completed before the start of the draft next week.

Recall, Penei Sewell, Jared Goff, Kerby Joseph and Amon-Ra St. Brown were all able to secure lucrative, long-term contracts around the time of the NFL Draft in years past.

Wood indicated the Lions are one of a few teams that are drafting, developing and willing to retain their own players at a high rate.

By signing players to extensions a little early, the organization is seeing value in their contracts, as the market prices at various positions continue to rise at a rapid rate.

"You talk about free agency and trades, every team says they want to draft well, develop their guys and re-sign them, and we’re one of the only teams that is doing that," said Wood. "And generally, we’ve re-signed guys a little early, which means we’ve got them done and got that behind us and generally got it at a decent pay scale, relative to what it might have been had you waited a year to get it done."

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