But the argument isn’t that he isn’t flawless. My main one is that the things we act like we know, after the fact, we usually don’t. (And this isn’t just happening on here, it’s raging on social media too). I blame the proliferation of the draft sims.
Again I go back to Lew and Hecht… fair enough maybe the consensus boards had them wrong, but whether they did or they didn’t, you couldn’t know ahead of time that they would 100% be available as part of a “would you rather have Lew & Zion Young” hypothetical. That’s something that can only be created after the fact. I would have bet my left nut Ponds wouldn’t be there at 50, and had I believed he would be ahead of time I might have acted differently before it (I wouldn’t have in this case, but as an example). It’s all of those decisions that Brad - and most GMs - will be able to predict far better than we will, which is why that specific hypothetical you posed engendered my response.
I think the Lions did as I expected. We drafted Miller in the first and then we were going to use a 4 to move up in the 2nd for a DE. I thought Zion would be the guy that best fit but the off field issues may have made their decision an easy one to go with Moore. Similar players. I expected Zion because he is a little better against the run but Moore has a little more explosion in his pass rush. Either way I think we were moving up to secure the DE we wanted.
As for a Center I did not see one in the cards this year with the acquisition of Juice. It was a weak class for Centers. In a normal year you can get a much better Center in rounds 3 and 4 than anyone in this class. Often it will be short armed OTs even later that convert to center.
There’s no reason to think Branch can’t be close to 100% from his injury. Look at Tatum, he’s excelling 9 months after his injury and there’s a lot more stress/strain on the calf playing basketball than football. We need safety depth, but our two starters will still be really, really damn good.
Well, I think the reason is everyone else other than Tatum. HE’S the outlier in this case, but there are positive signs that this specific injury might not be the career-killer it used to be. I’m not expecting old Branch this season, but I DO have more confidence that we can get him back starting in 2027
We do KNOW he felt strong enough about getting Moore to feel comfortable with giving up #128 to guarantee it happening. That’s all that really matters.
I hope—so much!— that this is the deal. But the # of guys in the secondary in the NFL that have successfully come back from that in full is probably a very short list. At any rate, he was hurt late in the season. I have to believe that 2026 is gone, this is about ‘27 for him.
I am less concerned with this because I think our secondary has a lot of versatility to it. I am pretty comfortable with some of our CBs shifting if needed.
Additionally, I am cautiously hopeful that our D-Line will pressure a little better making the whole secondary’s job a little easier as well.
I think there are enough pieces to play with to make this a respectable defense as a whole.
Right - that’s two years in a row. At least there were some 6.3’s this year IIRC, last year I think centers topped out at 6.0. I’m basically OK with us trading up, esp. if you guys think Zion has some baggage. Probably would have gone C rather than WR, I think Parker was still there, but no one gets every wish.
Its over, they are all Lions now, so we now become their biggest fans..
I thought last year we actually drafted Ratledge as our future Center to eventually replace Ragnow. That was assuming Rags was going to play at least another year so we would not be throwing Tate to the wolves in his 1st year. I wonder if he could still be the guy if things don’t work out with Mays in the long term.
That occurred to me, too. I think we were all spoiled with Rags, its going to be tough to get to that level again, but Tate may have the best chance… long term that is.
One, because many of us have been Lions fans through several regimes and had no problem criticizing their moves. Two, Brad has absolutely made some poor reaches for draft picks and three, the 2025 team was worse than the 2024 team and we’re hoping strength of schedule saves us in 2026. Yelling at the clouds is all fans have.
The draft is inherently a win-some, lose-some game. If a GM gets it right 55% of the time, just like a gambler, he’s great at his job. But that means he will get it wrong 45% of the time, which will allow us to get it right over him at damn near a coin flip rate! That I think falsely empowers the belief of fanbases.
That said, I wasn’t talking about Brad specifically, I was more talking about “consensus” boards vs. team boards. I’m not saying they won’t be wrong, clearly they will, if they’re good 45% of the time! But they’ll have a better feel of the actual draft slots of all the players than we will due to all of that information they have that we don’t. Now granted they can lose the big picture because of it, and I think some do, which I think is the main reason for any successes of consensus boards vs. NFL boards. Guys get overthought due to too much info. But on the whole it’s better - and more predictive - to have more info than less.
I think something that is not factored in there is using 2 or 3 draft picks to select only one player. When you package all those picks to select a BroMart all of those picks were squandered and not just the one that was used to select him.
Sure but a lot of context goes into that. For one, he ADDED a lot of those picks by trading down twice in the 2nd and 3rd. They were picks we didn’t have to start with. For two, those picks (two 5ths, basically) have an astronomically low hit rate. If you go that route you also have to give him credit for accruing picks in other ways when he does, by trading Stafford or working the comp pick system or what have you, or give him credit when a trade up works like Branch.
I love the draft and want as many picks as possible, you know that, but personally I think the only thing you can really grade about it is the player itself (which in this case was a really bad one), then have a separate grade for the way he manipulates the board, which personally I don’t love but that’s just because I approach it diffently philosophically.
Saying he wanted a safety isn’t the same as saying it was a major concern.
You have the Branch/Kerby uncertainty. Then you have Maddox and Harper, rated 8th and 11th of 91 safeties by PFF last year. Chuck Clark was in the top 20.
And then you still have Christian Izien, Loren Strickland, and Dan Jackson.
That makes it not false. I’m not going to be scolded (not saying this is you) for criticizing a 45% failure rate, when “some” of that 45% is self-inflicted. Like reaching on measurables and ignoring the fact that the guy dominated High School talent at his little school in British Columbia and having to have him so bad that you shed picks to go get him. Then he ends up where he started for now (not deserving of a roster spot, but keeping one anyway because you HAVE to based on the investment) while spending a first round pick on a guy at his position. Sorry, but I’m not going to ball wash Brad because of Amon-Ra in the 4th. I’m going to call balls and strikes. If I’m wrong, I man up. I always have and have no problem eating crow. If anyone has issues eating crow, it’s Brad Holmes.
And you know this how? I suspect in the room he has no problem admitting it. Publicly? Sure, but show me a GM who said ‘yeah we got that one wrong.’ We may wish they were more honest (I do as well), but it almost never happens, because the public figure handbook says ‘never admit being wrong,’ and honestly for good reason. It’s a good way to get public sentiment to turn against you and lose your job. You want to complain about that part of it, take it up with the culture.
The reason I take issue with you and others harping on the Manu pick - which I agree thus far looks terrible (and Bromart was even worse) - is because it’s a cherry-picked data point. I can provide multiple hypotheticals where that exact thought process would have been brilliant, and you know it. Hell I could give one - reaching/trading up for a guy who had never played before (Jordan Mailata) - that would have made him look like a genius. He would have been praised to the ends of the earth for that one, and I’d be just as against that praise as I am the criticism for Manu.
There are no hard-and-fast formulas for succeeding at the draft. A lot of people praise the Amon-Ra pick because he “didn’t trade up, took someone from a big school who had been productive.” Well, I can go through the 4th rounds of drafts for the past decade and produce a MONSTER list of guys just like that who didn’t hit. FAR more of them don’t then do, but we’re acting like it’s some sort of smart formula for doing it? No, it just worked out in this case because Ra is who Ra is. It’s about evaluating the individual, and Brad is, on the whole, VERY good at that. Not infallible. I mean, what if he HAD traded up for Amon-Ra, does that suddenly make it a bad pick? Of course not. It’s nonsense to me.
The Manu pick looks bad, I agree with that part, but not because of any of that fluff surrounding it you guys always bring up. Again, there are situations where all of that stuff is true and he could have drafted a big hit, is that suddenly a good way to do it? Does that make the process good? No, it doesn’t. It’s about the player. The pick was bad because Manu is bad. The Bromart pick was bad because Bromart was bad. If TeSlaa turns out to be a hit, then that was a good pick. That’s it. That’s all that matters. How we got there is irrelevant.