At the beginning of the season Dan Campbell was asked about the Detroit Lions only having 52 players going into the their first game of the year. He seemed to like the functionality the move gave the Lions.
“I think it’s for the flexibility. It gives us flexibility to make a move if we need to, if we need to add somebody. There again, we’re going to have a pretty good idea within the next, probably, 48 hours here, 24 to 48 hours, exactly how we want to go into this game and who we want to go into the game with. So, that could have a little bearing on roster, practice squad, vet squad, that whole thing. It just gives us a little bit of room to maneuver.”
The team moved defensive lineman Chris Smith up to the 53-man roster later that week and then waived him and the spot opened back up again.
It seemed at the time that this might be something the Lions would look to do all season. Here we are going into Week 6 and that spot is still open. Campbell was asked about it Friday and he once again talked about the flexibility.
“It really, it gives us options.” Campbell said. “I don’t want to say that we’ll necessarily use that, or we’re in a hurry to fill that. It really just has kind of given us a little bit of flexibility. Now, you know, it does give us options, but I wouldn’t say we’re necessarily in a hurry to fill that with with maybe one of those guys or somebody else right now.”
The thought here is that the Lions can both get around the practice squad elevation rules and they can have a spot open to combat against poaching.
From a practice squad sense, it allows the Lions to elevate three practice squad guys per game instead of two and it also allows the team to not use up all three of guys practice squad elevations they’re allotted per year. That is is if the Lions were to give one of the practice squad guys that 53rd spot. They’ve already done that twice this season with Smith and then Allen Robinson.
Then from the poaching stance, if a guy is getting looks, there’s a spot to move him right into to prevent the poaching from the practice squad.
The risk, of course, is that you leave a guy hanging out there to get claimed when you release him with the intentions of bringing them back to practice squad.
This is smart if the is indeed what the Lions are doing. Even if it’s not, having an open spot just gives a ton of flexibility to do a lot of things that the Lions may want to do. That includes signing or trading for a player. There’s a ready made spot for them to fill in. Don’t rule that out at all.