Wednesday open thread: How much should the Lions pay to keep Romeo Okwara?

Romeo Okwara has made his presence known the past several weeks, especially since Matt Patricia’s departure has led to a rejuvenated pass rush. Okwara has two of his eight sacks on the season in the last three weeks, including a safety and game-flipping forced fumble. Okwara continues to make the most of his role in spite of it predominantly being as a reserve pass rusher. As he continues to perform, the question becomes how much he’s worth this offseason with an expiring question.

Question of the day: How much would you pay to keep Romeo Okwara this offseason?

My answer: I think I would offer $7-8 million annually for Okwara. If there was serious competition I might consider pushing that number to $9 million, but anything more than that becomes questionable spending.

Okwara is fun to watch and has a great story with brother Julian in town for the foreseeable future, but at the same time he’s still a far cry from the upper echelon of pass rushers and his pay should reflect that.

I would love to see Okwara back in a Lions uniform in 2021, but I do worry that another team is going to overpay for him in the $11-13 million territory. However, with a new Lions regime coming in to very little pass rushing talent, a hopeless linebacking corps, and a receiving corps that will be gutted, they may be the ones to overpay Okwara just to keep some talent around.

Your turn. How much would you pay to keep Romeo Okwara around next season? Let us know in the poll and in the comments.