Personally, I’ve never once believed some of the things that I know other writers or Detroit Lions fans believe when it comes to Lions GM Brad Holmes. I totally get why people believe that they have Holmes figured out because during his time here, he’s largely shown us one way of acquiring players and that’s been the draft more often than not.
The thing is that I’ve never once felt that this was going to be the only way that he does things because the guy that he learned from in this business started out doing things the same exact way.
Les Snead and the Rams were very much a team that was all about building through the draft. They spent a few years getting that team together and then the infamous “F those picks” days began and the Rams started sending draft picks away for top players like Jalen Ramsey, Dante Fowler, Aquib Talib, Marcus Peters, Brandin Cooks, and more. They also hit free agency with Ndamukong Suh and more.
A lot of credit for my thoughts have to go to Rams beat writer Jourdan Rodrigue from The Athletic. Years ago when I was with Pride of Detroit, she came on the PODcast and said she expects Holmes to start moving draft assets after year three or four.
Pretty much everything she laid out before that has come true. I think this one will too. But I’ve been believing it even more based on everything that went down in 2024.
We’ll start last February at the combine when I asked Holmes straight up if Snead’s way of going about free agency and player acquisition inspired him. He told me this:
“Yeah, that’s a really good question. Because me and our assistant general manager Ray Agnew we were both with Les and he was actually a more integral point person in the free agent process because of his role as a director of pro scouting at the time. But we talked about how, When Les first got there in 2012, you know, obviously, he drafted for a lot of years, and you know, you’re attacking every single position in free agency. You’re trying to build the roster. When Ray and I got here in 2021, we had to take the same approach. But, as you kind of build the roster, and get more stronger in certain areas, your process alters a little bit because you can be a little bit more, we’ve always been strategic and selective, but you can even be more selective than you have in the past. So, we’re not quite there yet, where Les and the Rams are, you know, where he really started to be very, very, very selective there. But me and Ray were just talking about that and we are getting there, we’re getting closer.”
The Lions went on to make some big signings after that. They signed DJ Reader, they traded a third-round pick away for Carlton Davis and they moved even more picks during the 2024 NFL Draft. It was pretty obvious that for the Lions, moving picks around was not going to be an issue for them.
Then during the trade deadline the Lions, who we’ve expected to be conservative over time, were making calls to try to bring in some of the biggest pass rushers in the league.
The Lions called the Raiders to try to trade for Maxx Crosby. While that trade didn’t go down, the fact that the team called for one of the top pass rushers with one of the largest contracts out there shows that they’re willing to make a big move like that. There’s no doubt that if the Raiders had decided to make a deal, this would have been a huge “F them picks” moment for the Lions.
Now we head into a very important offseason. Something very similar to what the Rams had to deal with. You have a very good team and you can win a Super Bowl, but some big swings need to be taken. For the Rams, it was trading picks away for Matthew Stafford. For the Lions, it might be trading away picks for a top-end pass rusher.
If they’re going to it, right now seems like the time it would happen. Especially when you consider that the Lions are going to be picking later in the rounds anyway. They have cap space to make a move and with some of the extensions that we expected to happen likely getting pushed off a year, they’ll have extra cash to spend now.
Who knows, maybe they even do this: