Detroit Lions 2026 training camp preview: Can Luke Altmyer force a QB3 role?

With the Detroit Lions’ 2026 training camp on the horizon, we are bringing back our roster preview series to help prepare you for all the end-of-summer festivities. If you’re not familiar with this series, we guide you position-by-position through the roster, examining the starting, reserve, and specialty roles, which players are competing for which jobs, and project how the Lions will approach each situation.

In this initial installment, we turn our attention to the quarterback position, speculate on current and future roles, and discuss how many reserves will make the 53-man roster.

Roster construction

During the Brad Holmes and Dan Campbell regime, the Lions have taken slightly different approaches to the quarterback position in each season. However, the underlying philosophy has remained consistent: keep two quarterbacks on the active roster and one on the practice squad during the regular season, while maintaining the flexibility to add another quarterback to the active roster late in the season and playoffs for emergency purposes.

Let’s take a look at what they’ve done in the previous five seasons:

• 2021: The Lions kept three quarterbacks on the active roster, including Jared Goff, David Blough, and Tim Boyle, mainly due to the NFL’s COVID restrictions.
• 2022: Goff and Nate Sudfeld were on the active roster; Boyle was on the practice squad.
• 2023: Goff and Teddy Bridgewater were on the active roster, Blough on the practice squad, Sudfeld on injured reserve, and Hendon Hooker on the PUP list. Hooker would eventually be removed from the PUP and placed on the active roster late in the season.
• 2024: Goff and Hooker were on the active roster, with Jake Fromm on the practice squad. Bridgewater would rejoin the active roster late in the season as the Lions’ “emergency third quarterback,” but assumed QB2 duties for the playoffs, with Hooker acting as the Lions’ EQB3.
• 2025: Goff partnered with Kyle Allen, who beat out Hooker in a training camp battle; C.J. Beathard operated as the Lions’ practice squad QB.

Someone old and someone new

In 2025, Kyle Allen signed in Detroit for a modest $1.27 million contract and convincingly won the backup job out of training camp. He remained the Lions’ primary backup all season, and while he was not called upon to play meaningful snaps, he impressed the Buffalo Bills enough that they signed him to a two-year, $4.1 million contract—a figure larger than the Lions preferred to match.

To replace Allen, the Lions went with a familiar face, re-signing Teddy Bridgewater, who was Detroit’s primary backup in 2023 and late in 2024. Bridgewater brings plenty of experience, as well as tremendous leadership to the quarterbacks room, and checks in with a reasonable one-year, $1.8 million deal.

In an attempt to upgrade their QB3 role, the Lions signed undrafted rookie free agent Luke Altmyer out of Illinois. Altmyer’s contract is worth $888,333, only slightly above the league minimum, but he carries $257,500 in guarantees, [the second most the Lions distributed among this...