I saw John Mulaney last night, great show.
My point is that I donāt know how you can judge the depth of a draft just one year after the players play. Even if only Williams and Ratledge become plus starters, thatās still a successful draft. If you get an additional plus starter after the 2nd round youāre doing well for yourself. I personally think that Teslaa has higher than #3 WR upside and even if he tops out as a high quality #3 thatās still pretty solid for a 3rd rounder. You can argue that the Lions had bigger needs but they had already taken āneedsā picks with the first two so they took a swing with Teslaa. I will say that I like this swing way more than the Martin, Manu and Vaki swings. Also, Hassanein and Frazer have some promise. My point is that itās way too early to judge the 2025 draft, to say things like the lack of depth in the 2025 draft will cripple the team.
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I would rather watch the Sarah McLaughlin dog commercial on a loop for three hours
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The cool thing about preseason games is that you get a preview of the cornerback who will be trying to cover Justin Jefferson in Week 14 because nine other corners are on IR.
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Holy hyperbolic statement, Batman!
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Disagree. Holmes didnāt open his Detroit Lions Fantasy Camp until 2023, with the Brodric Martin pick. He quickly increased the campās enrollment with Sorsdal (2023), Manu (2024), Vaki RB (2024), and Teslaa (2025), almost all with trade-ups to ensure enrollment.
In short:
Holmes 2021 - One of the greatest drafts in league history.
Holmes 2021 thru 1st half of 2023 - Very good drafting overall.
Holmes 2nd half of 2023 thru 2025 - Very bad drafting overall. Highlighted by ridiculous reaches and very dumb & unnecessary trade-ups. He started feeling himself and got too cute & happy.
There are the trade-ups for his fantasy campers, and then thereās also the trade-up for Arnold, which had me throwing things at my computer. Traded pick #73 to Dallas to move up 5 spots, from 29 to 24, when there were at least 3 āstudā CBās on the board. So he takes Arnold instead of Wiggins (the better player) at 24, and Wiggins ends up still on the board at 29. Along with DeJean. Then, to add insult to injury, Dallas takes Beebe with our #73 pick, immediately becoming their starting center for the next 10 years. Just terrible.
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You can nitpick every GM in history this way after the fact. If you had anyone other than Arnold and Quinyon as your top two that year, you would have disagreed with every expert and everyone in here. And we KNEW they wouldnāt be into Wiggins with his struggles tackling, that was a pre-draft fait accompli. Disagree with it all you want, but thatās the way our FO operates.
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I am saying that the lack of depth from Pick #68 in ā23 to pick #244 in ā25 cripples any potential for elite upside for this team. Iāve been pretty consistent on this point. It isnāt about any one pick or decision, it is about the totality of players who should be contributing right now. The Lions will be relevant but there simply arenāt enough players from that group to make any success sustainable for an entire season
This is a problem and Iām astonished that you and others think it isnāt. And yes, this his an indictment of Holmesā hubris over the course of those drafts. The team had their best 3 year draft run - probably ever - and then face planted. It probably shocks no one that NFL careers are short. Some of the elite talent the team accumulated over that period already have career jeopardy. All of the terrific veterans from that ā21 team are gone (the OL, Anzalone, Raymond, Reynolds, etc). Attrition is constant. Teams need continuous influx of talent to fend off mediocrity and the Lions have failed to replenish that talent adequately over the last couple of years. Hoping that Williams AND Ratledge AND TeSlaa will become stars is wishcasting and even that wouldnāt be enough to replenish the depth that has been lost
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Nobody is happy heās missed picks. Iām pretty confident in saying everyone would agree with that.
But for me personally, I take a step back and look at the big picture and realize we have the best performing GM weāve ever had, and perhaps one of the best in our lives. If you go through and breakdown every single GM in history, they whiff all the time. Even the best ones. For years in a row (John Schneider somehow kept his job despite basically 10 straight years of bad drafts, and now heās āthe bestā again). And yet we currently have the best roster weāve perhaps ever had, I always remind myself of that.
The draft is essentially a crap shoot. The best drafters hit at like a 55% rate. That means theyāre going to miss 45% of the time, and due to the way statistics work, sometimes that is going to ābunch upā so that it happens all at once. I am on record personally as being from the school that prefers more draft picks. So no, I donāt love Bradās propensity to throw picks around to get his guys.
However I also canāt deny that some of the best FOs operate that way. The Rams. Philly. Payton teams. The Pats back in the day made a habit of cobbling together Super Bowl rosters while also drafting really poorly (Brady helped, admittedly).
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Same, for the reasons you detailed above. I do understand he math behind it. While there have been a few awful GMs (Detroit had one), there are no true draft savants. The best drafters have the highest and most picks. This contributes to my beef with Holmesā more recent philosophy. Go back to his first three drafts and he wasnāt squandering picks like he has more recently. I would be mollified a bit if he was hitting on some of these, but he hasnāt.
Does Hassanein count against the 53 man, or, is that only for a QB (foreign player)? Him being our 54th would be a totally unfair advantage.
Ill use a CM Punk quote
I didnt punch anybody I just choked somebody a little bit
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There must be something unquantifiable about the approach because the vast majority of teams who apply it philosophically tend to be the leagueās best teams, whereas the pick hoarders like Andrew Berry, Kwesi, etcā¦ canāt seem to put together a good roster. Like I said Iām a pick hoarder myself philosophically, but am always trying to self-scout.
What I really wish is that Brad would start to address the loss of picks by playing the comp pick game the way Philly and SF do. They replenish those mid-rounders pretty regularly that way. Now maybe it just hasnāt been long enough yet - you have to build up enough of a roster to start letting mid-level talent go, and we are just reaching the time when Brad could really start to do that - but I think itās more likely that we just donāt care all that much. The Rams donāt either, and that was where Brad was blooded.
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Good point. Basically donāt ever make him the first option. Better yet, make him the last option if heās single-covered and deep. Heāll get it.
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There is also the reoccurring issue of the modern world having no interest in nuance. For instance:
1:) we really should break up the first round, and maybe the second round, into cohorts and evaluate drafts within those cohorts. Itās just a totally different ball game. For example, go look at day John Schneiderās performance based off of where heās picking.
2:) the years of concern are during the weird NIL expansion phase. Talent in the drafts fell off a cliff. The last couple of years many draftniks had talent dropping to a fifth round level by pick 50-60.
3:) I think the 2024 draft being in Detroit may have had an impact on our preparations. Iām not sure of that and when I have time I may look into other host cities to see if other organizations struggled. While I canāt say for sure that it had an effect on that draft there were obviously a ton of extra duties involved that year.
4:) some of the positions were limited in terms of good options. If we wanted a NT in that class Martin was probably the last viable option given Clarkās back injury and Ika being so damn terrible. With Teslaa we were looking for a WR that could impact on an extreme dearth of targets. Our blocking threshold, with is already very high was probably through the roof if we were going to consider a WR at that spot.
I do think Brady was feeling himself a bit. Manu was probably the worst example of that. But I imagine that all GMs are egomaniacs. Most coaches as well. So decision makers are often going to be intrigued by balls of clay with obscene upsides
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For sure. The loss of context to the scourge of punchy headlines is one of the worst developments for any legit, nuanced discourse.
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Again, youāre basing this off of one bad draft after three historically good drafts. You canāt possibly judge the 2025 draft yet good or bad, thatās my point.
Plus the cripple the team hyperbole. One bad draft isnāt going to cripple a team that already had one of the best rosters in the league and still does tbh. Itās the injuries that has crippled the team. In terms of drafts? Again, one bad draft is not enough of a sample size to call this a pattern. If the 2025 draft flames out then youāll be on to something.
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Adding to your point @CuriousHusker ā¦
Holmes also couldnāt have predicted career altering injuries to his pro-bowl safeties in the same season.
When the draft took place in 2024 and 2025, there werenāt many realistic open roster apots available on the 53-man to keep 7 or more additional draft picks.
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You can disagree all you want. Brad has ALWAYS been aggressive.
There were multiple reports that the only reason he didnāt move up for Levi was because Dorsey talked him out of it. He moved up for Barnes. He moved up for Jamo. He wouldāve moved up for Gibbs if the Lions grabbed Witherspoon at 6 that year. He moved up for Branch. He has a long history of being aggressive to get his guy well before he ever moved up for Martin.
Iām not a fan of all his moves. I hated the Martin pick so much that I almost got ran off this site because of how hard I went against it while Brad was āPrimeā Brad and the drafting God, so Iām willing to step out of the way to criticize him.
To be quite honest, I donāt care about trade ups in the later rounds. Most guys outside of the 2nd round just wonāt be good in the NFL. Thatās the truth. If Brad feels conviction for a guy, he should go for it. And given his early success in finding guys in later rounds, he should feel like he should. Theyāre not going to all hit. Thatās fine.
Oh no, the late round picks from 2023 didnāt work out. 2024 looks like a bust, truly. And itās way too early to pass judgement on 2025 - if youāre calling Tyliek, Tate, and TeSlaa all busts this early then thatās your prerogative, but anyone making a claim on an entire draft class one year later seems very incapable of not making knee-jerk reactions. I tend to find these types of reactions incredibly reductive and boring.
lol, Wiggins was never getting drafted by the Lions. Terrion was the correct pick at the time.
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Teslaa is different. We all thought Brad had nailed that one and now weāre freaking out. Even if he nailed the pick given what he spent there isnāt a ton of excess value there so I get the risk-reward critique. But I still think we may end up hitting with the pick.
The Martin and Manu were in the same vein. High upside picks. And there was definitely a good bit of hubris there, not just in the evaluation but in our developmental infrastructure.
Hopefully weāve learned to really only target guys with a certain baseline of current skill when using that much draft capital. Once you get into the back half of day 3 I could mostly care less what their approach is. If they want lotto tickets that is fine. If they want cheap low ceiling ST types that is fine as well.
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