The Detroit Lions have begun preliminary negotiations on a contract with the player that they plan on selecting with the No. 1 pick in next month’s NFL Draft, but they aren’t saying who it might be.

Booth Newspapers reported the news after Lions president Tom Lewand told the paper at the NFL owners’ meetings in Dana Point, Calif., that the team could move swiftly to get something done, saying, “By the rules, we could agree to terms with somebody tomorrow if we wanted to.”

Lewand elaborated on the negotiations:

“We won’t put a timetable on it. From our standpoint, it’s whenever everything that needs to come together, comes together. There’s no timetable one way or the other. If we make the decision and (general manager) Martin (Mayhew) and (head coach) Jim (Schwartz) and everybody else is comfortable with it and we can come to a contract with the guy, there’s no reason we can’t do that tomorrow. If we can’t — and any one of those pieces isn’t in place — and it doesn’t get done until the night before the draft, that’s fine, too.”

Many NFL.com experts have the Lions taking Georgia QB Matthew Stafford with the No. 1 pick (Steve Wyche mock draft, Jamie Dukes, Charles Davis), but Pat Kirwan thinks the pick will be Virginia OT Eugene Monroe. Only time will tell, but apparently the process has begun.

Posted in: Around The Web  | comments  |