Dave Birkett | Detroit Free Press
Their new coaching staff in place, the Detroit Lions are going about making changes to their front office.
Kyle O’Brien and Jimmy Raye III, two of former Lions GM Bob Quinn’s top lieutenants in the personnel department in recent years, are no long with the team.
O’Brien was one of Quinn’s first hires, serving most recently as Lions vice president of player personnel. He was one of three in-house candidates who interviewed for the GM job after Quinn was fired in November, and previously spent 10 seasons working with Quinn with the New England Patriots.
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Raye spent three seasons with the Lions as a senior personnel executive.
He was vice president of player personnel and assistant general manager for the Houston Texans in 2017, and spent 17 years in a variety of roles with the San Diego Chargers in 1996-2012.
Raye’s father, Jimmy Raye Jr., was the starting quarterback for Michigan State’s 1966 national championship team.
The Lions hired Brad Holmes as general manager and Dan Campbell as head coach in January after extensive searches.
Holmes, the former college scouting director with the Los Angeles Rams, brought Ray Agnew from L.A. as assistant GM, and hired former Cleveland Browns and Kansas City Chiefs GM John Dorsey as a senior personnel executive.
Most lower-level scouting department changes are made around or after the NFL draft.
Holmes said both Agnew and Dorsey have been “amazing” assets for him as a first-time GM.
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“(Agnew has) been an excellent fit from a culture standpoint,” Holmes said. “Obviously, with entering free agency preparation and his experience on the pro personnel side of things has been tremendous value for someone as myself. So, that’s been awesome.
“(Dorsey has) been an amazing asset as well. Obviously, for someone like myself as a first-year GM, and what John’s experience has been as a GM and his experience in team building and incredible ability to evaluate, he’s been tremendous. All the way from a big-picture standpoint and allowing himself to be a resource that I can lean on, all the way to the kind of more minute details of things that probably, I didn’t even realize at first. I would even say what’s even been even more cool with John is that he’s actually been able to share some experiences of what may have not worked for him. For him to share those things with me has been awesome. But I can’t speak enough about how great of a value and asset that those two men have been on top of what the coaching staff has brought.”
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.