Last week we ran a little experiment where we tried to find what Brad Holmes’ biggest mistake as the Lions GM was. We made our choice, but a lot of Lions fans responded with something else. They feel drafting Brodric Martin was Holmes’ biggest mistake.
You can understand why they would feel that way. Martin was a small school guy out of Western Kentucky that wasn’t really on anyone’s radar and then the Lions traded three picks to the Cardinals so they could move up and take Martin in the third-round.
So far we have seen very little out of him with the Lions. In 2023 Martin played one game and that was in prime time against the Raiders. It did not go too well. So far we’ve only seen him twice this season and neither of those games went too well either.
So why are we not giving up on Martin yet? It’s really simple and you probably won’t like to hear it just like you didn’t like to hear it last year. It was always known that Martin was a project and when you’re a good team, you don’t need all your draft picks to start immediately. This project isn’t over yet.
But that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been some improvement. We saw Martin show up to camp in tremendous shape and we saw him look pretty good at times as well. You could see the improvement happening. Then in the preseason, you saw what he could really be in the games against the Giants and Chiefs. He at up so much space, but he was also able to bring some pressure too.
Just when things were starting to look good and he might get some real time on the field in 2024, he suffered a knee injury and had to go on injured reserve. He was activated on November 20th and played a little bit on Thanksgiving and then played a healthy amount against the Packers the next week. He didn’t play against the Bills or the Bears in the last two weeks. He was a healthy scratch in both games.
The injury took some time off the clock for him. He was developing the right way and things were going right and then he missed two and half months of time that could have been used to have him play better and get in the game. Now it’s playoff push time and the Lions need to focus more on sealing the first seed in the NFC and winning the division title than they can on a project.
Plus the Lions have one of the best nose tackles in the league in DJ Reader. They don’t need Martin to play right now.
We’re betting that 2025 is the year that we really start to see the fruit being bared for Martin. A full training camp and then hopefully a healthy start to the season and you’ll begin to see what Holmes was thinking when he moved Heaven an Earth to go up and get this guy. If it doesn’t happen next year, then we’ll join people in admitting this was a mistake.