2026 Detroit Lions Offseason Thread

[MichiganCardinal]

3 hours ago, Jason_R said:

But they maneuvered up the draft board for these developmental players like they were moving up for Gibbs or Jameson Williams. You put players like that on a bit of a pedestal. Now everyone is dancing around Manu like, uh are we allowed to acknowledge that he is not progressing? I don't know what that looks like in the locker room, but is he getting attention that another player should get?

 

1 hour ago, RatkoVarda said:

exactly. Brad and Dan said they could not sleep, knowing that Manu and Vaki were still available for the next day's picks. really??? If they both really thought that, then that speaks to a huge mis-evaluation for both guys. if they stood still and grabbed Manu, the expectations/narratives might be different.

and again, Brad is the best Lions GM in my lifetime by a mile.

I come back though to the question of who if not Manu/Vaki? And to get ahead of the likelihood that someone in the ~130 picks after them was good, why didn’t a team take them in one of the first three rounds?

This Door #2 fallacy is just Monday Morning QBing in my opinion. If they have two guys they love in the 4th round, I would rather them move to go get them than sit right and take four mediocre players who all get cut by 2026. Compare Holmes’ drafts apples to apples across the league and he’s easily in the top ten.

And the comments after draft day are just coach speak. They’re not going to say “yeah it’s round four, so hopefully these guys pan out but who knows 🤷‍♂️ “

[Longgone]

1 hour ago, RatkoVarda said:

exactly. Brad and Dan said they could not sleep, knowing that Manu and Vaki were still available for the next day's picks. really??? If they both really thought that, then that speaks to a huge mis-evaluation for both guys. if they stood still and grabbed Manu, the expectations/narratives might be different.

and again, Brad is the best Lions GM in my lifetime by a mile.

Brad selects players on which he has conviction. He should continue to do that even though they won't all hit. He also is willing to gamble a few picks on high risk/high reward players, and the nature of those types is that most will fail, but keep doing it anyway.

[Jason_R]

1 hour ago, MichiganCardinal said:

 

I come back though to the question of who if not Manu/Vaki? And to get ahead of the likelihood that someone in the ~130 picks after them was good, why didn’t a team take them in one of the first three rounds?

This Door #2 fallacy is just Monday Morning QBing in my opinion. If they have two guys they love in the 4th round, I would rather them move to go get them than sit right and take four mediocre players who all get cut by 2026. Compare Holmes’ drafts apples to apples across the league and he’s easily in the top ten.

And the comments after draft day are just coach speak. They’re not going to say “yeah it’s round four, so hopefully these guys pan out but who knows 🤷‍♂️ “

All I’m saying is that if he hadn’t traded up for Manu he would still have had the 92nd pick in the 2025 NFL draft where he could have picked up Jalen Milroe as the replacement for Hendon Hooker at the position of developmental QB. 😂