Conflicting reports emerge on Lions' interest in C.J. Mosley

Considering how he played last season and what his cost would be (pretty minimal), it's a bit surprising that the Detroit Lions have not re-signed defensive tackle C.J. Mosley. It's even more surprising when you consider how much turnover they've experienced at the defensive tackle position this offseason.

On the flip side, though, I suppose it's not a huge surprise that the Lions might not have interest in re-signing a player who was sent home from London and suspended for two weeks in the middle of last season. The Lions have really put an emphasis on only having high-character players in their locker room, so it would make sense for them to not bring back a guy who was allegedly caught with marijuana after allegedly disabling the smoke detector in his hotel room.

There have been basically no real developments from a contract standpoint between Mosley and the Lions this offseason, leading most to believe that the team did in fact decide to not re-sign him. On Friday, however, MLive's Kyle Meinke reported that the Lions are interested in re-signing Mosley after all, and he also reported that "it's possible a deal could come together as soon as next week" with negotiations currently taking place.

Also included in that report are two other interesting tidbits. For starters, there's allegedly "at least one other team" interested in signing Mosley, and Meinke's source basically denied the whole marijuana/smoke detector story as the reason behind Mosley's suspension. Instead, according to this story, Mosley hasn't been re-signed yet simply because there's been a disagreement on his worth from a salary standpoint.

You might think Mosley is on the verge of re-signing with the Lions based on the MLive report, but that seems in question given this report from ESPN's Josina Anderson:

Source: "Contrary to published reports, the #Lions have moved on from C.J. Mosley."

— Josina Anderson (@JosinaAnderson) June 5, 2015

There's really no room in between with these two reports. Either the Lions are negotiating with Mosley to re-sign him or they have completely moved on following the London incident.

So which report is more believable? I'm going to side with ESPN on this one. The report from MLive sounds like it's based around an agent's attempt to drum up interest in a client who remains unsigned deep into the offseason. If the Lions were truly interested in bringing back Mosley, I would imagine it would have happened before now. And if the marijuana/smoke detector story wasn't actually true, why wait this long to make a denial and then not provide the actual reason behind Mosley's suspension? It really just doesn't add up, so I wouldn't get too excited about the possibility of Mosley returning to Detroit at this point.