More help along the defensive front would help Levi and Alim to look a lot better as well. If we get Jordan Davis & Thibz/Hutch, those others will miraculously have a great sophomore campaign. 
Frankly I’ve just had it with all this shit about how great Levi is. He showed nothing except that he can’t stop the run and doesn’t win pass reps.
I’m sick of the “redshirt” excuse. Why wouldn’t you tell us you were redshirting him before the season so we wouldn’t be pissed off instead of defending his shitshow rookie campaign by saying “Well we kind of saw it as a redshirt year for him.”
Brad Holmes’s biggest flaw seems to be that he isn’t willing to move off of his mistakes. Dan has clearly shown his ability to move off of his mistakes with the whole A-Lynn situation. Brad just can’t tell us that Levi played like shit or that the Benson trade was a disaster.
I’ll believe it when I see it with Levi. He seems to have decent potential because of his athleticism, but I haven’t seen anything to be excited about from his on field play.
And I’d like it if the GM and coach worked on the football team instead of acting as a 2nd marketing department.
Doesn’t the article say he re-aggrivated a back injury in preseason workouts? If that’s the case, they couldn’t have said that if they didn’t know about it. 
I could be wrong, but that’s my take
Was it an excuse when I got into my motorcycle accident, or should I still have lived up to other ppl’s expectations?
Where do we draw the line between injuries and “excuses”?
Why have you “had it?”
He is gonna do what he does. Maybe he improves, maybe he doesn’t. If not, admit your mistake and move on.
Ask last year’s LB room about that.
…Then ask the wR room.
Same. Big inconclusive so far though. I don’t understand being pissed about a guy getting hurt and not meeting expectations. I mean…if you expect him to not get hurt, I guess it’s okay.
None of us have, nor could we.
Really curious what you are seeing here? I think Brad and Dan are both doing very well at working on the football team. What activated you to feel they are “marketing” rather than Coaching and acquiring talent? You don’t think they’re doing their jobs well?
LOL, wow…just wow. So it really comes down to you’re pissed because a traded 5th round pick probably isn’t going to work out and a rookie played poorly and you don’t like the excuse. Just HOW is Brad suppose to “move off his mistakes”? Are you saying we should just cut these guys? Do you know how many GM’s WISH they had his mistakes, you know, BOTH OF THEM? And then accusing them of not working on the football team when you don’t have clue 1 about what they do? Wow.
I’m going to back up HSV here. Not only did Holmes trade a pick to move up to get Levi, Levi was a second pick (EDIT: I’m dumb. We traded up for Barnes, not Levi). This is a guy who should be contributing IMMEDIATELY. It’s one thing to take a guy in the 4th or 5th who might need a year or two, but a guy in the 2nd who produced like Levi is a pretty big whiff so far. Not saying Levi is a bust, but man, trading up for a guy in the 2nd round and getting what you got out of Levi so far is not ideal. But I’m sure that is just all of Brad Holmes’ plan.
Can we stop with this apparent draft master and evaluator of talent that Brad Holmes apparently is? He hasn’t really done anything at all to improve the roster since he’s been here. He brought in a bunch of 1yr prove it guys last year, and most of them didn’t work out. Charles Harris did. Williams was meh (but I love him as a person). Raymond did way more than he should’ve been. Anzalone is a serviceable depth guy.
His draft has been ‘okay’. Sewell looks good. Levi looks bad. McNeil looks okay. Barnes looks okay. Iffy looks okay. Jermar looks okay. So far it looks like we got a plus starter in Sewell and a serviceable starter in McNeil, the rest look like solid depth pieces to replaceable with other teams solid depth pieces. I hope all these guys pan out, but man, I don’t know how you look at performances from this draft class last year and go ‘Man, I’m so lucky Brad Holmes is running our draft.’ EDIT: I also forgot to include ASB, which is criminal. + Starter, obviously.
He added almost zero talent to the roster so far this offseason. A couple of fringe LBs and DJ Chark (who will we be paying for 3 years despite him only possibly playing for us for one.) It’s pretty easy to look at Holme’s body of work and wonder “Where’s the beef?” I can very much see HSV’s point in feeling like Holmes is more of a marketer than a team builder. Granted, we’re only 1.5 offseasons in, but Holmes looks like a pretty average GM, maybe a average+ GM because he’s yet to destroy the team with a Flowers/Collins signing.
Idk, I don’t get all the fuss with Holmes. I like him, want him to do well, but there’s a lot of rose-colored glasses being worn around here.
agree… and I think there have been plenty of posts that demonstrated hiw rare it is for a DT to play up to their full ability as rookies.
Freaks like Suh and Donald… sure… most of the rest…. not so much.
Oh, waitaminute…is he a 2nd round pick?
what are the chances…
Also, the next video on that page makes me want to golf hustle that entire team except Blough.
We didn’t trade up for Levi. And this article was about Dan Campbells view of him not brads. Am I misssing something or is it a full moon? Lol
The Real Curse of Bobby Layne has disproportionately affected 2nd round draft picks in Detroit specifically. We can’t catch a break.
Holmes didn’t trade up to pick Levi. If it was a bad pick we’ll know this year. Even with his poor play our rookie class was ranked 6th by ESPN and 7th by PFF.
It might be a full moon. I don’t know why I got the move for Barnes and Levi confused. Regardless, Levi was the #41 pick, so the point still stands that you expect a little bit of something out of that spot.
Yep, and…? So what is the point to owning anything unless or until you know it’s a bust?
Yup - “so far.” Can’t predict injuries, man.
You are aware that he’s bald, correct?
Translation…hell no!
Building through the draft…need some warm bodies on the field. Those bandaids are on “prove it” deals because we dont’ trust 'em long term. I like it…the ultimate incentive based situation.
I’m a big fan of Sewell and St Brown. I think Chark’s gonna be a nice piece too. I’m giving him a largely inconclusive grade so far. I like Iffy a lot too, especially given his draft status…then there are the UDFAs. Nice work Holmes!!!
Let’s also pretend he’s not handsome, while we’re at it…Geez!
Yeah He wasn’t really on my radar last year. I kind of trusted Holmes on this especially with JOK and Moehrig on the board still… so really a disappointment. But hopefully he develops. He did look like a total waste. But we didn’t have much else might as well get him some development.
Are you saying this to be argumentative or do you really believe this?
The fact that I forgot to even mention St. Brown means I’m no longer posting for the day. I’m clearly not on any game at all today.
I mean, that makes sense, but if you were planning on “redshirting” the guy, and then he gets hurt preseason, why even play him at all?
Again, I don’t think there’s really any correlation between a potential injury he had and then after the season Holmes saying “Well we really saw this year as kind of a redshirt year for Levi.”
It just seems off to me. Why play the guy you were developing so much that it’s a “redshirt” year for if he’s hurt enough to affect his play like that?
Because I haven’t seen a single person in the building acknowledge that he wasn’t that good last year. If someone did, then I’ll gladly take all of this back.
Completely agree with this.
No, don’t get me wrong. I completely think that they’re doing a really good job right now. I’m with you in the 10 wins club.
I just wish they would stop telling us how great everything is without actually showing us. Like with Levi. They’ve shown us a lot of good so far.
Asking our leadership to hold people accountable shouldn’t warrant this reaction.
Well I’m not really pissed at trading the 5th round pick. It’s a 5th round pick. Just accept it didn’t work and move on. Don’t tell us it’s another redshirt year for Trinity. He was a healthu scratch like 75% of the time. And didn’t we trade for him to fix our receiver core last year so we could evaluate Goff better?
Well, to correct myself, he can’t really right now.
Levi, no. Trinity? I doubt he makes the roster this year.
Uh yeah. How many GM’s have we had? I just wish he could publicly say that we need to see more from Levi next year, and not keep telling us how great he is without any playing time to back it up.
Do you really believe this roster is any better than the one he inherited? It might have more ‘potential’ with some of the younger guys we can’t call busts yet, but this team stunk when he took over and it still stinks. I don’t know how anyone who is looking at this roster fairly thinks it’s much better now, talent wise, than it was a year or two ago.
Nobody does that … c’mon