The Detroit Lions and linebacker DeAndre Levy have agreed to a four-year contract extension, accoring to multiple reports. Levy's new deal was obviously on general manager Martin Mayhew's mind this week, and on Wednesday they got the deal done.
"He's a heck of a football player, just a playmaker on our defense versus the run and the pass," Mayhew said Tuesday, per the Detroit Free Press. "The guy's an impact player, so we definitely want to keep him on our defense. It's very important to our football team. His leadership is also excellent and professional in every sense of the word, so he has a lot of value to us and he's one of our own guys so we want to definitely keep him around."
Levy was Detroit's third round pick back in 2009 and has been with the Lions for his entire career. He's been a starter for just about all of his tenure, but over the last two his play has taken a leap and he's become one of the NFL's best 4-3 linebackers.
During 2013 and 2014, Levy combined for 206 solo tackles, second-most in the NFL to only Lavonte David at 207. Levy also led all linebackers with seven interceptions in that time and ranked fourth with 20 passes defensed.
It's a damn crime that Levy didn't make the Pro Bowl in 2014, when he finished second to Luke Keuchly with 151 total tackles and was the clear second-best player (behind Ndamukong Suh) on the league's third-ranked defense by Football Outsiders' DVOA.
The 2014 Lions sported one of the best run defenses of the last 25 years, with Levy playing a starring role. His 47 run stops were second-most among all linebackers, per Pro Football Focus, and his 14.1 run stop percentage (stops/snaps) was also second-best in the league, behind only Rolando McClain. He expertly navigated blockers to pick his way through to the hole and snag ball-carriers before they broke through the first level of defnese, helping the Lions allow only 0.86 second-level yards per carry (per Football Outsiders), best in the league.
Levy lined up mostly as the weak side linebacker for the Detroit defense, but he also slid over to the middle on some plays, more than holding his own when he did so. He was often even tasked with difficult coverage assignments, and the Lions showed just how much faith they have in him in that area when they assigned him to track Dez Bryant on a few occasions during the Lions' playoff loss to the Dallas Cowboys.
Levy was entering the final season of a three-year, $9.75 million contract signed back in 2013. An amazing 62 linebackers have contracts that pay more than $9.75 million total, and 63 have deals that average more than $3.25 million per season. Levy's 2015 cap hit was set to be $4.5 million, the 39th-highest among all NFL linebackers. Those figures simply were not commensurate with the level of play Levy's shown over the last few seasons.
Terms of his new deal were not immediately released, but it seems reasonable to conclude that he'll be making significantly more than he was scheduled to under his previous contract. Levy's not a pass-rusher like Justin Houston, he of the $101 million contract, but something that splits the middle of the four-year, $32 million deal signed by Daryl Washington and Bobby Wagner's four-year, $43 million contract wouldn't be out of line, based on Levy's performance. That would make him the eight-highest paid linebacker in the NFL on an average annual basis. Even if he pushes more toward Wagner's deal, that would be perfectly good value for the Lions.
