My mind always goes back to when I was covering the Detroit Lions for Pride of Detroit and we had The Athletic’s Rams beat writer Jourdan Rodrigue on the podcast and she outlined what newly hired Lions GM Brad Holmes’ regime could look like and how that would relate to what the Rams did with Les Snead during the time that Holmes was there.
Much of what she said has come to fruition. The Lions are mostly building through the draft, Holmes hasn’t been afraid to maneuver around the draft and culture has been a big part of the Lions build. The one thing that hasn’t happened yet is that the Lions have not gone out there and spent money or traded assets away to get big time players. Something Snead and the Rams a lot did in route to their Super Bowl win.
I had a chance to ask Brad Holmes about this on Tuesday and this is what he said
“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 than 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.”
I know that might not be the answer that some Lions fans are looking for and Holmes used the word selective in place of saying something like “splash” or “big signing”, but it seems to be something that’s on the Lions mind and as they progress even farther into their rebuild, they might find themselves in a position become more “selective.”
It makes sense that they wouldn’t do it now. Things are ahead of schedule and yes, this is a team that very well could win the Super Bowl in 2024, but it’s easy to see that this team is not done yet when you consider that the plan is to build a team that can have sustained success rather than build a team that can win one championship.
Just keep moving along with the current approach. Why not? It’s working quite well at the moment. Perhaps in a year or two when the team feels that it is ready to go with homegrown talent, they may look to take some major swings in free agency or the trade market. We’ll have to wait and see.