NFL teams
Michael Rothstein, ESPN Staff Writer 9y

Stephen Tulloch set to rejoin Lions

NFL, Detroit Lions

After expressing some doubt about whether or not he would be with the Detroit Lions in 2015, linebacker Stephen Tulloch tweeted Thursday that he will indeed rejoin the Lions this season.

The reason for the questions came mostly from the potential salary-cap hit he is due for next season, coming in at $5.8 million. The 30-year-old is also coming off the first major injury of his career, a torn ACL suffered while celebrating a sack of Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers in Week 3.

Earlier this week, Tulloch said rehab from his injury is ahead of schedule and that he was hopeful he would return to the Lions for his 10th season in the league. He had 20 tackles and two sacks prior to his injury.

Lions general manager Martin Mayhew praised Tulloch and his preinjury performance in coordinator Teryl Austin's defense at last month's NFL combine.

"The thing with Stephen is, his grades were exceptional in all those games," Mayhew said. "And I think he was still adapting to our new defensive scheme at that time. So I don't think he totally had the whole scheme down as a MIKE backer. There's a lot of plays in front of him and on the back end so he has to make a lot of calls and there's a lot of responsibility that he has that a guy like say Rashean Mathis or Jason Jones doesn't have because he's the middle linebacker.

"He was still sort of adapting to the scheme and he was playing lights-out. He was playing great. You have to evaluate all that as you go but I was happy with the way he played last year."

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