Corner is our #1 priority next draft. I could see them picking up a guard if mahogany doesn’t play well again. But not in the first.
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Lol whatever dude… You could’ve written Octoberish and been correct, but instead took the extreme timeline. Now you’re stuck defending a dumb statement. Have a good one 
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I think we’re deeper at edge than we were last season. Linebacker too. If our secondary holds up we should be fine on that side of the ball.
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He’s always been better @ OT IMO… But they have Borom as the swing OT3 so they’re trying to get Frazier work everywhere. At some point, you have to assume that’s hurting his development trying to play too many positions
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Agree, definitely see DB (CB/S) as the #1 need going into next offseason. LBer could be up there too
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I agree with that point, but remember Frazier missed out on camp all last year. I think what the Lions are doing with Frazier, is throwing him out at different positions to see what he looks most comfortable with during an actual game. Anyone can look good in spots or at times during practice, but it’s what you do on the field with actual bullets flying that tells the tale. I think the Lions wanted to get him experience playing multiple positions, see what looks good and what doesn’t, and soon enough they will decide what his primary position will be.
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Hmmm, you literally highlighted text which says “following the team’s bye week” which is Oct 25. How is that not Novemberish? You sure like your molehills to die on.
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We tried to develop our Malaita and failed. Perhaps Malaita is just one of one. You say that we knew that Rags or Decker were hurt but NFL players play hurt. Did we know that they were so close to retirement? Perhaps we did. It’s my believe that their timelines accelerated past what we anticipated.
Also, we will see now that they no longer have an all time great OL coach how well the Eagles are able to sustain with different permutations. If I have to guess, if they were to lose both Johnson and Dickerson to early retirement they would also struggle. That would be the equivalent of what we went through. It’s a tough scenario for any team to navigate IMO.
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I’m not worried about the OL. With a dud co-ordinator and a bad OL we still had a top 5 offense last season, and the OL shouldn’t be any worse this year.
Big picture, we have a good offense. What we need for a Super Bowl push is for the defense to step up. 2024 set an unrealistically high bar for the OL, we don’t NEED a top 5 OL to make a run.
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The question will largely be answered by how well and how quickly Blake Miller settles in. If he is solid early and improves over the early part of the schedule, the Lions could easily have a top 5 OL. Of course C and LG are big question marks as well. A lot of questions right now but having a great OL coach and a seasoned pro QB are often the best answers to these questions most teams are also wrestling with. Plus, Penei Sewell…
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Relatively struggle, sure. But they seem to be better at planning for these things than DC/Holmes have been. As mentioned, they drafted an OT in the 3rd. They also drafted a G later.
And those guys notwithstanding, even if they suddenly lost Johnson and Dickerson they would retain 60% of their line with young starters.
I do think the Lions have done well the last two years with Ratledge and Miller, while adding younger players like Mays and Scruggs, so maybe the rebound will be faster than worries me. Even so, the team will have four guys starting at new positions on the line and cohesion will be complicated by Mays being out until Octoberish
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This just dropped
Paywalled, but a couple takeways from Rogers
Miller: promising
Frazier: not ready for prime time
McLaughlin: promising
Mahogany: played well, front runner for OLG
Borom: not great
Takeaway for McLaughlin:
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Thanks now i had to do a Mock Draft lol
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This is fair. I do think there are a few reasons for this. Some that I wish they would do more of and strategies that I would prefer we not deploy to the extent Philly has.
1:) they were at a different stage in their franchise build in 2021. They had just recently won a SB and they just needed the QB. They hit on a cheap one and were off to the races.
2:) Howie is the best at accumulating draft capital. He plays the comp pick game and punts into future years. This allows him the draft capital to pour into “luxuries” like high round backup OL. I wish Brad were open to that. I’m somewhat optimistic that we may be about to start playing the comp pick game but I can never really see him punting on certain portions of drafts and moving capital back a year with that capital. He does do this on day 3. While doing this on the fringes and acquiring less Lovett and Dan Jackson types and more SGH and Mahogany types one year later is nice, I’d love to see him deploy this earlier where the gains are potentially more impactful.
3:). Philadelphia is the new NO in terms of deferred money. We’ve gone that way a bit for sure but I’d prefer we utilize some credit card restraint. I know many on here disagree. I happen to believe winning a championship in any particular year has a fair amount of luck involved so I prefer to opt for the many shots on goal approach.
4:) GMs and scouting departments have positions they succeed with and those that they struggle with. Ozzie Newsome and WRs is a famous example. Perhaps the Eagles with Darlington were uniquely special with OL evaluation and development. Perhaps this is an area in which Brad and the gang struggle a bit and that has been obscured bc BQ for all of his faults was actually pretty good at it.
Overall I think your perspective is highly logical but perhaps shades pessimistic due to some SOL scar tissue. I do appreciate you taking the time to explain your perspective granularly. Hopefully the 2026 Lions OL proves you wrong. 
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Miller, CM and McLaughlin (perhaps) are the most important ones so that’s a pleasant little tidbit. Borom was on the left side which needs to be taken into account IMO.
Am I the only one that thought CM looked gassed? How warm was it on the field at game time? Ohio summers are pretty muggy from what my limited experience but I’m a WC humidity pussy.
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This OL is not going to be the elite OL from the past. And that was this teams #1 strength. It was their most important before any other position.
Decker was the most underrated tackle. He played consistently on a pro-bowl level. Ragnow was at an all-pro level. Sewell is an all-pro. The OG’s were always good. Miller certainly can be a great RT, and can reach the Decker level. But those are big shoes ti fill. He’s a rookie. We don’t know.
The only way you’re going to get Ragnow production is sign one to a billion dollars or draft one.
Rattledge and whoever else on the other sider have to be better.
I think this year OL will be average with a great LT.
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Can we be average at all four other positions? That is the key. Solid league starter all over and then generational LT would be a top ten-ish line. It’s the weak links that kill you.
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Ragnow ■■■■■■ us over. Decker didn’t slowly decline…he fell off a cliff. We took Manu in the 3rd as the developmental guy behind Taylor. That’s exactly what the Eagles did in the 3rd this year following Lane Johnson calling this likely his last year. What more could we have done? Rags retired at 29…
2025 draft we took 2nd rounder Tate Ratledge.
2026 draft we took 1st rounder Blake Miller.
2026 Free agency we signed Cade Mays, #2 available FA Center.
So we essentially have made high investments at 3/5 starting positions in about a 14 month span. What more could a team possibly do to improve the OLine? This isn’t even mentioning the signings of Borom, Bartch, and the trade that got us Scruggs. All of whom have a lot of recent starting experience. And all of them are are projected not to start for us. Is there another NFL team running out depth at OLine with 35+ starts from 2025 alone? I didn’t even mention Frazier and McLaughlin who have potential.
The depth here is among the leagues best. The investment over the last year+ is basically the max.
I’m TBD on the current status of the OLine. But I’m not the least be critical in terms of did they do enough? The answer is an emphatic YES!
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While I think @HiFidelity was a little over the top with how he expressed his concerns with day three depth performance and roster depth, I do think he’s right that it is pretty important when your roster and salary cap is so top heavy. That being said it’s not easy to raise your day three hit rate. Therefore I think the more rational tweak is just to focus on starting with more lottery tickets to begin with. Getting the comp pick train rolling down the tracks is the simplest way to achieve that.
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Functionally, though, what have they done differently? They developed Mailata - the outlieriest of outlier occurences - we spent even more to try and develop our own guy. That is not mismanagement at least not compared to the way Philly did it. We just appear to have whiffed on the prospect. But that’s evaluation issues, not our approach to it.
In fact we have spent far more resources on our OL than they have. They’ve just done what many on here hoped to do, hit big on non-premium picks. Namely Mailata and Kelce.
Howie also missed on Steen and another first rounder Dillard.
I do like that they continuously take cheap swings on either guys with traits (Mailata, Jalyx Hunt, the big international DT they drafted this year, Markel Bell, Hollis Pierce, Cam Williams) OR guys who were big successes despite lacking them (Willie Lampkin, Blankenship, Ricks, etc…). But again, that is not overly different than what we’ve done with Manu, Martin, Kingsley, even ARSB.
Frankly I think the biggest difference between the two is action. Howie is undoubtedly a wheeler and dealer, and I think fans really love the appearance of action. I think the TRUTH of his success though is in his evaluations. He’s a very good one, or the people on his staff who he trusts are.