The Lions are cheap as hell for making Frank Ragnow pay back his signing bonus

There is nothing more pathetic than NFL teams crying poor, and the Detroit Lions continue to lead the league in this regard when it comes to screwing over their franchise legends. It took almost a decade for the Lions to mend fences with Calvin Johnson after demanding he return $1.6M of his signing bonus after retiring due to injury in 2016. It’s a jerk move they made with Barry Sanders, and now they’re doing it once again.

In a carbon copy of their Megatron beef, the Lions demanded that legendary center Frank Ragnow return a portion of his signing bonus after he also retired at 29-years-old.

The team’s pathetic justification is that they expect players to return money they were paid for “in advance” without them “rendering services.” It’s the kind of corporate speak that’s designed to sound reasonable to people working ordinary jobs, but it ignores the entire nature of NFL contracts often being structured in team-friendly ways, regardless of how the money is getting to players.

Signing bonuses and guaranteed money have been the safest way for allow for salary cap tinkering by teams. It allows for agents to present large contracts, like in Ragnow’s case, the four-year, $54M extension he signed in 2021 — while the deal itself only had an average of $3.7M per year in true salary, with the rest of the deal being made up bonuses, $6M of which was a true signing bonus.

This is a fairly new convention, which came into effect in the last 10-20 years of the NFL. For example, when Peyton Manning signed his extension with the Colts in 2011 it was a $90M deal, with a $20 million signing bonus — less than a quarter of the total deal. Now it’s routine for bonuses to be upwards of 50% of a contract total, while also seeing teams do things like with this to fiddle with the numbers further.

It’s important to note that salary conversion didn’t occur with Ragnow’s deal, but it’s accepted around the league that signing bonus money is tantamount to guaranteed money, and used in place of higher yearly salaries. To double back and then use that as a justification to reclaim funds from a player is beyond the pale, especially when someone like Ragnow put his life on the line for the team to return when they needed him, which was typified by former Lions linebacker Alex Anzalone, who was teammates with Ragnow.

It’s absolute clown behavior from the Lions and team owner Sheila Ford Hamp, who has an estimated net worth of $5.4B. To nickel and dime a former great over a portion of a $6M bonus is something only the Lions do, and it keeps happening with players who are retiring due to significant injuries. These are the legends who risked everything to help Detroit win, and their reward is a bill from their former employee.

Shame on the Lions for being cheapskates like this, and shame on them for being the only NFL team who claws back part of their signing bonus money.