Ok, I need everyone to just walk with me on this one, becasue what I’m saying here about the Detroit Lions’ selection of Giovanni Manu is not totally against Manu. It’s against where Manu was taken and what the Lions didn’t do and how that’s affecting them now.
We’re a one week away from the Lions going into regular season mode. The team starts getting ready for their season opener against the Rams next week and they’ll also do their cut downs. It’s almost here, yet here we are with a receiving corps that’s so shallow that the Lions could be working in running backs to make up for the fact that basically nobody stepped up.
I’m a big fan of Lions’ GM Brad Holmes and I think the selection of Manu was a good one. I even mocked Manu to the Lions on multiple occasions. The big thing was that I mocked him there in the seventh-round and the Lions traded up future assets to get him in the fourth-round after they didn’t have a single pick in the third.
Again, it’s hard to blame the Lions for being committed to their plan to take on this project and there were a lot of teams that were interested and some were thinking of taking Manu ahead of the Lions pick.
Still, this guy isn’t going to play this year. The size and athleticism is there and you can see a big future, but I don’t know if he plays in 2026 either. This is a long term project that a team looking to win a Super Bowl took on instead of trying to draft a receiver when everyone knew it was a need all offseason long.
Scoring Terrion Arnold in the first and then Ennis Rakestraw in the second-round were great moves. The Lions lucked out so hard there. But then they went through the third-round that had so much receiving talent and decided not move up for any of them. Here’s who was available:
- Malchi Corley
- Jermaine Burton
- Roman Wilson
- Jalen McMillan
- Luke McCaffrey
- Troy Franklin
- Dovontez Walker
- Javon Baker
This was after Josh Reynolds was already gone. The team knew they needed to replace him and the team has since talked about how they want a receiver to be like him. They simply chose not to pick one.
The reason they didn’t might have been because Holmes said he had confidence in what the team had already. That looks really bad at this time because Donovan Peoples-Jones has been really bad and he might not make the roster, Kaden Davis has been good, but he hasn’t been that good, Daurice Fountain had a couple good weeks and then fell off a cliff. Isaiah Williams has been the best, but he’s also the most redundant of the group. Amon-Ra St. Brown, Kalif Raymond, Sione Vaki and Jahmyr Gibbs can all do what he does and can do it at a high level.
It’s bad. It’s really bad. I want to reiterate that I’m fully on board with taking Giovani Manu in this draft. He could be really good someday. But where they took him might have cost the Lions and Brad Holmes not moving up for a receiver is definitely costing them now.
The Lions have two weeks before the season right now. With most, myself included, only projecting four receivers to make the 53-man roster, it would still be quite a shock if the Lions didn’t make a move for a receiver very soon. This is pretty underwhelming.