Lol I like this Onwuzurike guy

Seems like a good 2nd round pick. I dont know much about him but he was ranked 36 on the ringers board and looks close enough on others so cant complain.

I'm actually hoping for Nico Collins next round. I always thought he was a big time talent held back by bad QB play. Thats if he makes it to us.

I like drafting BEEF in rounds 1-2

Round 3 should be WR and best defensive player available


Impressed with the leadership so far.

Double DT guess the idea is to try to go Rams style and have that stud interior like the Rams. Seems like both guys are fine value so I'm ok with it.

We got that later 3rd rounder I'm on the Nico homer pick haha. He might even be available in the 4th looking at some rankings.

super duper 180 from the Quinn regime favoring scheme fit & position need over athletic ability. Sewell is 90th percentile athlete at tackle. Levi is 87th percentile. McNeil 85th percentile at their respective positions. really loading up on the athletes! willing to wager the 3rd round comp pick we have coming up will fit that profile.

lol 97th percentile athlete. Holmes certainly has a type.

Good drafts days. Lions draft BEEF

Interesting draft. I'll write up some more thorough thoughts on the pics later. For now, some quick hits.

- It's pretty clear Sewell was high on their list going into the draft. You may have seen the video of the war room going off when they picked Sewell. There were reports they even tried to trade up for him. I'm glad they didn't.

-Doubling up at DT is interesting. They now have 16 defensive linemen on the team. This unit is getting overhauled, and thankfully so, it's been bad the last few years. There's going to be some odd men out, that's for sure. There's also some evidence they sniped a pick from Philly. Philly traded back from 70 to 73 and the Lions picked McNiell at 72 right before Philly grabbed another DT, and looked sort of bummed when it happened. They may have thought they were safe from the Lions since they grabbed a DT in rd. 2.

-The decision to give up a 5th and next years 4th to trade up for Derrick Barnes hopefully pays off. The 4th round is when talent starts to drop off at a steeper pace. It's where good GM's can really show their worth. For rounds 1 and even into 2 everyone sort of knows whos who. Round 5+ picks are mostly shots in the dark. But rounds 3 & 4 are where a good GM can still get some quality starters. Hopefully Holmes is as good here as advertised.

Overall the draft did a good job matching needs and talent. However if they don't have at least an average to above average D-Line next year, given the draft and FA capital spent there, then things went wrong.

It's been pleasant to read fairly consensus views that the Lions had at least a very good top-10 draft, with more than one outlet putting them in the top-5 or top-3. Of course no one knows anything and this probably means Sewell will disappoint and none of their Day 2 or 3 guys will be playing in 3 years, but this morning it's been great to see a ton of positive coverage.

I think intellectually I should be rooting for us to finish 4th again in 2021 getting a top-5 or so pick, while rooting for the Rams to come in below expectation in a super-tough division and give us another top-15 first. Can really imagine putting a foundation together with two more impact guys if this year's class does mostly pan out to expectation. (Hopefully we don't need to package multiple picks on a QB though - if Fields kills it for Chicago (ugh) and Goff flames out, could be looking long and hard at this year's decision.)

There are going to be a lot of scrubs on the way out. Nothing wrong with giving retreads a shot but you gotta cut bait when they don't pan out.

Here's an overview of the D-Line. Assume they keep at most 10 guys but even that's a lot.

Roster Locks:
Romeo Okwara
Trey Flowers
Michael Brockers
Levi Onwuzurike
Alim McNeil

Probably going to make it:
Julian Okwara - As long as he's healthy they probably want to give him a shot.
John Penisini - He was probably the best DT last year but is purely a run stuffing 0 technique nose tackle. If the new regime doesn't value that, he might be gone.

Guys who have a shot but are going to have to earn it:
Kevin Strong
John Atkins - Sat out last year for COVID.
Austin Bryant - Maybe a LB now?
Dashawn Hand - Potential starter when healthy.
Jashon Cornell - Missed all of last season with an injury but he was an intriguing prospect.
Nick Williams - just took a paycut to avoid the axe, might still get it anyways.

Camp Bodies:
Charles Harris
Joel Heath
Robert McCray.

Frank Ragnow gets a 4 year extension, with 2 years left on his rookie deal, making him the highest paid center in the NFL and locked up for 6 more seasons. Good work Brad Holmes, and I suppose our former thread title subject Bob gets some credit for this pick as well.

On the other end, waived Kerryon Johnson today. At just $2M I thought they might give him one more chance but I guess investing in Williams meant that wasn't an option. Every $1M counts.

Just for fun I went back and looked at our 1st and 2nd round investment in RBs since I've been a fan. Eish.

2020 - D'Andre Swift - 2nd/35th
2018 - Kerryon Johnson - 2nd/43rd
2015 - Ameer Abdullah - 2nd/54th
2011 - Mikel Leshoure - 2nd/57th
2010 - Jahvid Best - 1st/30th
2008 - Kevin Smith - 3rd/65th (included since he's the first pick of the 3rd round so close to a 2nd, and I honestly don't remember him playing for the team. At all. Apparently he had 976 yards and 8 TDs in '08, sputtered for 4 more years.)
2004 - Kevin Jones - 1st/30th
1989 - Barry Sanders - 1st/3rd

We invested a first or a second on average every other year for a decade and got almost nothing out of it. That's... something.

Hope Swift breaks the trend.

Running back is a weird position in the NFL now. There are still a handful of guys who can single handedly shred a defense. But there's so few of them. Derrick Henry, Saquon Barkley, Christian McCaffery, maybe Dalvin Cook... is that it? And Barkley and McCaffery are coming off injury years. You've got a tier 2 group of guys like Nick Chubb, Ezekiel Elliot and Melvin Gordon. But there just aren't many good running backs despite most teams carrying 4 of them on their roster. A lot of these guys follow a similar trend, a 4 or 5 year career that looks like:

1 year as the #1 starter that shows some promise.
1 year that's injury shortened.
A year or 2 of being the #2 back.
A year of being a 3rd or 4th back before ultimately getting released.

While just about every Lions RB has followed that trend, it may be more of a league wide trend of what happens at the RB position. Even guys that have kickass years Like McCaffery and Barkley sometimes only spend a year or two on top before injuries or other performance issues take their toll.

I still want to believe in the RB position but in today's NFL they just aren't being used the way they used to. It's now one of the lowest paid positions. I know some draft guys are saying that you should just not take one until the 4th round or later due to value. I'm starting to come around to that idea. There's just such a massive talent gap between the top tier and then everyone else, that unless you have a chance to grab a top tier prospect you're better off looking elsewhere.

0-17 here we come!

That's a one-way train to a 2-6 start heading into the Bye week

Lol where do you see 2 wins there? The 49ers, bears, and eagles are probably the best potential wins on that list as they are all in rebuild/young QB mode and may be in a bad place. The Packers game has potential if Rodgers bails, he's been carrying that team on his back for a long time, they are likely a sub .500 team with most other QBs.

I honestly don't care about their record this year. Draft equity would be nice, but I just want to see some signs of life. The last 9 years have been frustratingly stagnant. They never lived up to that promise shown in the 2011 season. It's hard to quantify what a "good" season is for this team, but you can just sort of feel it. Mostly it involves young players stepping up and showing some big potential, like we saw in 2009 and 10. While those years were statistically worse than 2007, that 2007 7-9 season was an obvious mirage, that team was devoid of any real long term potential in that state. They could go 4-13 this year, but as long as we see some real potential in the last couple draft classes, I'll be pretty happy we're headed in the right direction.

that's exactly what the schedule looks like to me

The Athletic had us and Houston as the only two consensus last-place-in-their-division teams, and predicted Houston worst/1st pick 3-14, and Detroit next-worst/2nd pick 5-12. Our Vegas win total is 5, Houston's 4.5, then 4 teams tied at 6.5. So yeah, rough season incoming. But agree, the season is successful if we see good starts/growth out of the draft class, and feel confident making a decision on Goff one way or another. If we get those two things then I don't care if we go 5-12, and I'd rather go 2-15 than 7-10.

Not favored in a single game, lol

Sounds about right. Although being that it's a new regime, new QB, new d-line, and a revamped defensive backfield, there could be some surprised and good value bets on both sides there. 5 wins is probably the median expectation, but the variance from this team is likely huge. Anywhere from complete suck 0-17 to surprisingly promising 9-8 would not surprise me. I don't see any real reason they would be competitive with top tier teams, but if these offseason acquisitions hit at a good clip, we could back to where we were in like 2010, ready to take it to the next level.

I'm surprised we're 3 point dogs to CHI at home. It's also weird there's only a 2.5 point difference between our home/road lines (+5.5 @CHI). You usually see 4-6 point differences home/road.

I'm also a little surprised we're 1 point dogs to CIN at home, implying we're ~4 point dogs to them on a neutral site. I would have thought that was a little closer. /shrug

I think you're spot on Koss with that super-huge range of outcomes in play. Not much (outside of pure success) would surprise me.

Weird Bears take. Dalton probably starts the season, and at least in 2021, is probably better than Fields. By the time game 2 rolls around, bears are likely out of contention and are starting to get Fields more reps. Although you do see the Bears not swing as much between home/away vs. MIN and GB, and both Minny games are very late in the season, so maybe that's not a huge factor. Another factor may be that late season home CHI games tend to be in weird weather, which means lower scoring and possibly lower spreads?

I'm feeling optimistic, I think 2-15 is in play.

Not gonna lie - looking forward to this like its the Superbowl


https://www.prideofdetroit.com/2021/...eo-brad-holmes