Looks like he's back. I'm not enough of a salary guy to know the value on the contract, so I'll leave that to others. Here's two articles on it:

http://www.freep.com/article/20140314/SPORTS01/303140033
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/03/14/report-brandon-pettigrew-agrees-to-deal-to-return-to-lions/

Looks like we're setting up for BPA in the draft. We need a young center, probably one more oline depth player, an olb, a cb, a s and a k. Even if we sign Ihedgibo (sp?) I want us to draft a S who can take over soon. Wonder if Mayhew wants the ability to go up and get the guy he wants like Watkins or dare I say Clowney?

4 yr $16M. Good deal IMO. Weren't going to get a 65+ catch TE who is a very good blocker in the draft or FA. I have little faith in big joe, who had a whole 9 catches or whatever last year and showed little outside of a handful of nice redZone plays. When his role started to expand and he got more PT, he couldn't get open at all.

Despite the drops, Pett does have a lot of value to the team due to his ability to catch and block well. Teams can key off of him the play call as they could with Joe (pass) or Michael (run).

His production did warrant that kind of contract and just 29 he should have another good 4 years in him.

horrible move to re-sign pettigrew

ihedigbo is a glorified special teamer that is a pretty good run support safety but he backs off in coverage bc he has no acceleration and settles for just trying to make tackles after the catch. he s a good football player but it depends on his role and he s not a good coverage player. safety remains a need

going from willie young to daryl tapp was a downgrade on the dl and the lions still need more of a passrush. jason jones as a DE cant consistently beat OTs, Ansah has a lot of promise and Taylor appears to be a quality rotational player but not a standout passrusher.

chandler and cumberland are better players than pettigrew with less production but less stupid boneheaded game changing plays. reliability biggest issue with pettigrew. talent is there but he s the lions equivalent of Roger Cedeno and Alex Sanchez

Even though I'm not a Pettigrew fan, this was a good signing. Alleviates the need to draft TE early.

odd way of looking at it. they could have alleviated that need w a more reliable and cheaper player at TE therefore a bad signing. even if they drafted a TE like and spend Pettigrew's money to land a better safety/passrusher obviating the need to draft at another position. settling for a known unreliable player and hoping that coaching can pick up the slack is not a good move, esp when the team isnt getting tremendous value and cap space is limited to fill other needs

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"Good teams don't worry about a whole lot of stuff. They travel, they play, they win. And it doesn't matter where they go, what the time block is, all those kinds of things. They never seem to bother teams that play well, and we want to be one of those teams." -Jim Caldwell

ol stone hands is back

There was a point in the first 4-5 games that I felt he shouldn't even be running patterns in our offense that's how bad his hands had become. He did improve so I'm not going to trash the move or bash the money.

I'd like to see Fauria fill out a smidge and refine his seperation skills to have someone to fall back on though. That may never happen but we need a contingency plan.

Who are the better safety/passrusher's? They got Pettigrew for less than many lesser TE's get. As I said I'm not a big Pettigrew fan, too many drops. Resigning him was a safe move, you know what he is, solid but unspectacular. At this point of FA, the premier players are gone. The best safety's flew of the board.

I agree with liontrax, he improved and was the best TE on the market. I was interested in Owen Daniels as he performed well with Houston a few years ago and may have been worth a look (and cheaper). I'm happy with the move, much more of a Pett fan this last season than the 4 fumble season before

One thing that I think is being overlooked about Pettigrew is that last year he had the fewest drops of his career. Yes, his overall yards and receptions were down, which is in part due to his poor play early in the season, but he improved a great deal as the season went along and overall I think he played solidly. This was a good signing in my opinion.

It's all well and good to complain about the signing, but what else were the Lions going to do? Which TE on the market was a better option? I don't think there were any other better options available. The only viable options would be Daniels, Finley, or Keller, all of whom have injury histories. So I don't see what options the Lions really had here, and I think they made the right call.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is really just a 2-3 yr deal with a good chunk if not all of the guaranteed money coming in the first 2 years. It should be similar to how they structured the Tate deal and I think that should make this signing a pretty decent value.