It’s actually Dose of Dion. The header is misleading.
Yeah, it takes me to Lions / Chargers preview from last year…
Tabernak!
Internalized clickbait?! 
Here it is!!enjoy
…dead wrong. lol
Alright, I’m highjacking this thread.
I think he makes legit a point.
Everyone knows I’m a Brad slappy, but, who is comfortable with even having Marcus Davenport on the team, let alone counting on him to be DE2?
Holmes isn’t done cooking yet…also → There’s always this guy!
I think they expect to have Z in the mix as well, so while he tried to move up for an edge but couldn’t, they didn’t panic because they knew they have another solid vet waiting in the wings. Just seems the case, could be wrong.
is comfortable with even having Marcus Davenport on the team, let alone counting on him to be DE2?
I like him couple things if he stays healthy we have above average DE Yes big IF Second if he stays healthy we have great cost effective above average DE
I do not agree with the way he played his cards in the draft. I think we should have passed on Ratledge and kept our 4th round pick. We missed out on the top 3 OGs who all went before our pick in the 1st round. There was no reason to panic and think we had to trade up for Ratledge. We could have just selected TeSlaa with our 2nd round pick. We then have our 3rd round pick, both 3rd round picks for next year, and our 4th round pick.
I can see why they wanted TeSlaa and if they were that convinced we had to have him just take him in round 2. I just did not see Ratledge as a special talent. I understand Glasgow was terrible last year but we could have just signed Scherff on a 1 year deal for this year. I am not a fan of IOL that are nearly 6’7" and only 308 lbs that have trouble with pad level and a history of lower leg injuries. I am 100% behind Ratledge now that he is a Lion but I thought it was a terrible decision to trade all those picks away. Just my opinion.
I think where you and Holmes differ in opinion is how Holmes viewed the remaining talent in the draft. He probably had a much smaller list of players he viewed as draftable based on their internal rankings.
So, you call it panicking where Holmes, imo, believed Ratledge was one of the top remaining players on his board of available options.
Culture fit is huge with Brad, and Dan. No turds!
That’s where everyone keeps tripping up. A turd that is ranked high by people who don’t know or care about turds is not going to be ranked high by Brad.
A player that is a perfect culture fit, may be ranked higher by Brad than by the Kiper’s.
Brad knows what he needs to fulfill his vision, and, we don’t.
I agree, and think you are exactly right. I am going to use some over generalizations here but the idea is the point. Listening to Brad, I think that basically it boils down to the Lions look at the draft and let’s say it as they identify 10 guys (just to pick a number) that they believe are Detroit Lions. These guys are first and foremost character fits. These guys also are players they feel will be better than guys we already have on the roster, so the team will improve just from adding these guys to the team. Then as the draft unfolds, they watch these specific guys and if they do not believe that guy will be there soon, they make their move to get them.
If the Lions were just panickers, they wouldn’t have stood pat and taken Tyliek Williams. They would have traded up the moment the Steelers took Derrick Harmon at #21. The Lions were well aware that that Bills liked Williams and really Williams was the last of the big guys who have athleticism to still penetrate the pocket. The Lions knew they needed a McNiel replacement in the short term and a DJ Reader replacement in the long term. Williams checks both of those boxes and obviously they like his character otherwise he isn’t even on their board.
For Ratledge, the Lions traded up because they saw a run on offensive lineman starting, and they knew they had to get the guy they wanted quickly.
For Teslaa, this is where we “let Brad cook”. The Lions obviously saw something in the guy and felt the strong need to pay a price and go get him. This is where you have to trust the evaluation and put some faith in it. I think the Lions figured he was going higher in the draft due to his athleticism and they felt a run on WR was about to happen so they made the move. The Pats had just selected a WR before the Lions selection, and 4 WR’s went after Teslaa. My bet is, the Lions knew a guy with his athleticism was only there because of his lack of college production and they decided it was worth the risk.
I think this is all fair, and I wasn’t Ratledge’s biggest fan either (though I’m pretty sure I liked him more than you did). But that’s just a matter of evaluation, and we all disagree about that stuff all the time. Clearly Brad felt differently about him 
He’s been right more than us and more likely to be right again.
But I definitely don’t think he panicked, I think he genuinely liked Ratledge. In fact I almost guarantee it, panicking isn’t something he does. He’s very, very good at staying fluid during the draft. Which I believe is why we didn’t draft an edge until the 6th round, if you read the tea leaves.
I also really believe he just views the process behind the trades differently than most everyone else. He’s very Rams-ian when it comes to the value of a pick. The value is the player and/or the roster spot, and the pick is just one of the ways you acquire players. Those future 3rds are just nebulous possibilities, but the player - Isaac TeSlaa - is right there. The 70th pick has become a player by the time we pull the trigger on the trade, and players matter more than the picks.
I view the draft differently and probably always will, I think it is more of an inexact science and want more swings. But I am always saying conviction is the most important thing for a GM, and Brad’s got it in spades. And it’s impossible to argue with the roster he’s built.
I think a lot of the last three or five posts in this thread goes to what many on the board have been working out.
How to identify the players in the draft that Holmes, not the draft media experts etc, but Holmes, values in the draft.
What makes a “Detroit Lion draft pick”
Yeah, and honestly I think the board does a pretty good job (nailed Terrion last year). Brad mentioned in the video that there are guys they’re convicted on but he doesn’t believe they need to move up or they get sniped or what have you. I mean it’s almost impossible that they didn’t love the intangibles of guys like Jihaad Campbell, Ezeiruaku, JTT, Landon Jackson, etc…
Which means the tiebreaker is probably the tape. You can hear it in the video. He was much higher on Tyleik’s juice than consensus, which considered him more of a NT only type. Brad and Co. see him as having the ability to be more of a 3T, Alim-type (and to their credit so did @HSVLion - though that might have just been homer stuff - and @CuriousHusker). That’s the part we couldn’t have known, how he viewed the tape.
Same with TeSlaa, he talked about how much production he had against the best guys in the class at the Senior Bowl. That’s what pushed him into love territory, not the intangibles stuff. That was just a box checked.
I think now it’s easier for us to figure out which guys are gonna fit us from a character perspective, but that’s just the baseline. From there whose tape will they love? That’s harder to figure out.
I don’t think it’s hard to figure out when it’s presented to you.
Here is Teslaa’s tape. What will the Lions like about him?
A. Hands
B. Run - blocking
C. Precision in route-running (I have no idea if this is there for Teslaa or not, but you know for darn sure it’s an emphasis here.)
It’s getting to the tape. Just like character, you know what we’re looking for, but how do you know the character of a player you’ll never be given any particular insight into? A player where much of what they are is only revealed when you’re able to zero in on them and put in the effort?
Right, and everything we heard about TeSlaa pre-draft was what a great kid he was, and we knew he checked our WR-blocking box - which is not only a tape-based thing but speaks to his mindset. Blocking, motor, effort… we can glean things about the player’s intangibles from those aspects of his tape. He had fans in here all through the process (pretty sure @DetroitvsEverybody brought him up back before the Senior Bowl).
The tangible stuff is harder. Yes, the hands showed out, but lots of guys had good hands in the class. And how much of a premium does Brad put on hands at WR? He drafted Jamo too, who was notoriously dropsy during college. And where was TeSlaa’s production? A guy with that much talent ought to produce. You can say well, his offense was trash, but there was another WR producing, why didn’t TeSlaa?
But like Brad said, from the outside looking in, we weren’t privy to some of the reasons behind his lack of production. I try and mention that as often as possible during the process - that we’re trying to shape our opinions with only like 50% of the information - which is why I think we end up hyper-focused on the tape. It’s the one thing we can get almost as much of as he can, unless they’re at small schools. And on tape, he struggled to separate and couldn’t beat press (which was the main reason he played the slot for them).
Clearly, we believe we can get more out of him, and it’s due to the stuff we didn’t have access too. Well, that and the testing. His route-running has a long way to go, but he ought to be able to get there based on the tape - and based on the work ethic, etc… His press release packages have to improve, and clearly we believe they will. He didn’t need anything like that at Hillsdale - he could beat guys right off the line - and at Arkansas they just flexed him inside immediately to get him on the field ASAP. Now he actually has time to work on it.