Hill, Shad Banks, York, Lawson, Barham (apparently as a SAM), and a bunch of smaller school guys that we know of
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Agreed, but you never know who’s ready. Schwesinger was basically a one-year college starter but stepped in and was great right away. Teddye Buchanan was excellent too, man we should have just drafted that guy last year! He was my original crush for the entire draft.
We’ve got a comedian here. Is that how you financed all that Everglades farmland in the first place?
BTW I posted this for actual football discussion. There’s still time to contribute something actually meaningful.
Wow forgot about his injury. Good point. If he returns to form that’d be a real bonus. But I hope we still have a plan B
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That’s actually the plan. In Nickel: Barnes will be the WILL. I anticipate an increase in playing in the Nickel. A little less base due to the DL being stronger vs the run.
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When Dan said we need more competition at spots, I think he was talking to Barnes. Draft Hill in the second, and sort out who stays on the field with Jack, including M-Rod (Shep’s pet, LOL) who is also recovering. And maybe even post-achilles Branch. As many of you have said, I just can’t see us playing as much 4-3 as we have the last few years.
We still need that guy who has a beeline nose for the ball. I’ve sort of seen it in Barnes at times, but then again you see Jamis Winston plays and Dak Prescott whiffs in the end zone.
Im shocked lions havnt replaced this guy yet
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I was saying before that i wonder if an undersized will/nb role would be his best role moving forward but we shall see how he recovers and what limitations may exist.
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Branch is a dog, and he seems to me to be the type of guy who can recover quickly. We can only hope at this point. Really a devastating injury for a DB.
It’s the one thing about this regime that made 0 sense to me
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Yea really feels like Brad fell in love with one of his guys. Don’t get me wrong hes a good player and a great guy from what i can tell but if he was a FA do you think Brad would have targeted him?
Shep fell in love with one of Brad’s guys, and convinced him to keep said guy. Who’s just a guy.
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This is the way it went down imo. And AG going to the Jets and also wanting said guy raised the price higher than it probably would have been otherwise.
That said I still say there’s a better player in there than we saw last year. He was starting to pop right before he got hurt. Hopefully he can get back to being that guy. But if he can’t, we move on.
Dude put some respect on Goff’s wheels.
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I think the more likely story here is that Brad is looking more at the future (next year and beyond) re: linebackers than he is drafting a LB this year to play SAM and moving Barnes to WILL.
The fact of the matter is that Barnes is mediocre and isn’t worth the contract he’s on. He has a $6.145m option bonus that is due before the 1st game of the regular season in 2027 and a 510k bonus for playing time if he’s plays over 80%. He has no guaranteed money.
It’s really: do the Lions want to pay Barnes $8m in cash for 2027 or not? As of now, you’d think it seems pretty unlikely that the Lions will be picking up based on his performance and it seems that they’re at least possibly preparing for the fact that they won’t. And if that’s what you’re thinking, is there a guy you like this year that can move into his place when he’s gone the following season after getting a year under his belt?
If the Lions are looking to add a SAM linebacker, it’s most likely because they’re preparing to not have Barnes on the roster in 2027. Not necessarily because they think he can play WILL. (He can’t, imo - he has never shown the skillset to do what we ask the WILL in our system to do.)
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I will always believe the reason so much base defense was played last year was to justify paying Barnes.
Shep needed to prove why he stood on the table for Barnes and yeah we saw how that worked out
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Surely not. I mean, that would explain a lot. But surely not.
I think a lot of it is because our SAM is supposed to generate pass rush. The other DE opposite Hutch, while occasionally gets some pressure, seems to have more responsibility against the run in our defense than being a pure pass rusher.
We also heard they were expecting big things from Barnes in this respect, so that adds up. It is supposed to be more of a pass-rushing spot than the way most teams use their SAMs (if they still use them at all), but not as much as a pure 3-4 OLB like Pittsburgh uses, which is why guys like Houston don’t work out for us - they’re not good enough at the LB-y aspects of the position. In fact it’s a pretty niche player overall.
I am still hoping he was just struggling to come back from injury. There was a stretch before he got hurt where he looked like the player we wanted him to become… then he got hurt at the worst time. I suspect that’s why we paid him. It has to be, actually. They believed he was becoming that guy. So hopefully he makes it back there.
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