Eugene Parker, the agent of Ndamukong Suh, talked with the Omaha World-Herald about where the No. 2 overall pick stands as far as contract negotiations with the Lions go. The update on how far away a deal with Suh is didn't really provide a ton of new or concrete information, but it was interesting to get some perspective from Parker.
So what will Suh command? "We don't talk about any of that until the deal is done," Parker said. "That's just the best way to go about it.
"We've had conversations. It would be safe to say the parties are communicating. We have had and we are having communications."
Parker said there are elements to contracts that can be worked through in advance — "as far as structure, as far as language, as far as things that might be important to them that might not be a problem to us, and vice versa."
"So you can at least open up some dialogue and get some of that stuff out of the way," he said. "And sometimes these things take quick turns. Sometimes things seem like they're going along slowly, and then in a matter of hours you make substantial headway."
Parker's basic theme was that a deal isn't likely going to come about in the immediate future, but that is simply a "statement on the process." Suh has already made it well known he doesn't want to hold out, so right now it seems like more of a case of waiting for a sense of urgency to get a deal done that Parker mentioned in the article. Once that happens, a deal will probably follow, and Parker claims it won't be a case of waiting for Sam Bradford to ink a deal with the Rams or Gerald McCoy to ink a deal with the Buccaneers.
"I can't say the information isn't relevant, but we look at Ndamukong as his own person," Parker said. "We do a deal based on him. You look at a lot of factors, so I can't say those would be irrelevant, but we're not necessarily waiting on them. They might be waiting on us."
Training camp begins on July 31, so my prediction is that a deal will get done in the week or so before then. That's usually when the Lions get their draft picks all signed, so that would be my guess for Suh.