Allen Park — By now, it’s an annual NFL Draft tradition for Lions general manager Brad Holmes. Once the pick is in, the viral celebration erupts. And the furniture in the Lions’ war room takes a serious beating.
It started two years ago when Detroit landed Penei Sewell with the seventh overall pick. And it happened again last year, when the Lions grabbed Aidan Hutchinson at No. 2 and then traded up to draft Jameson Williams at No. 12. This year, Holmes had vowed to be a little more restrained with his table-slamming, bear-hugging outbursts.
“I actually told myself, and I told the others in the room, I was going to be more disciplined,” he admitted Saturday with a sheepish laugh as he took stock of his third draft as GM.
But he couldn’t help himself after the Lions traded back from the sixth pick Thursday night and then surprised everyone but themselves by drafting Alabama running back Jahmyr Gibbs with the 12th pick.
Holmes was seated in his chair as the Lions’ selection became official, and when head coach Dan Campbell came over to congratulate him with a hearty chest slap, the GM reflexively started pounding the table, inadvertently giving Campbell a sharp elbow to the midsection. And as a smiling Campbell retreated to the back of the room to shake off the blow, a bellowing Holmes turned and nearly tackled team president Rod Wood with a wild high-five and a hug.
Holmes tried to explain all that enthusiasm early Saturday evening, after the Lions had completed their eight-player draft class with two more late-round picks.
“I just can’t emphasize it enough that we draft players that we love,” he said. “When you’re able to acquire them and you get them, sometimes you just really can’t control the emotion. It’s genuine. It’s authentic.”
‘Trying to win games’
And it’s a big part of why this regime seems to be winning hearts and minds here, even among the more skeptical factions of the Lions’ fan base. As annual traditions go, breaking tables sure beats drafting top-10 receivers or tight ends, I suppose. But all jokes aside, the raw, unchecked emotion really does seem to be resonating.
We’ve seen plenty of it over the last two seasons, from the head coach’s tears after a loss early in that trying 2021 campaign to Holmes getting choked up this January while talking about two of the cornerstones from his first draft class in Sewell and Amon-Ra St. Brown.
And we saw it again over the last few days, which is probably what helped temper some of that criticism that came the Lions’ way after Holmes spent a pair of first-round picks on a running back and an off-ball linebacker, something no NFL team had done in nearly 20 years. Those might’ve been head-scratchers on the network studio sets in Kansas City — and for the analytically-inclined everywhere — but they were table-rattlers in Allen Park.
“At the end of the day, we acquire these players for a lot of different reasons,” Holmes said Saturday, doubling down on what he’d done in this draft. “But, ultimately, what are we trying to accomplish? We’re trying to win games. That’s why we acquire these players.
“I know a lot will be said about, ‘You acquired a running back in the first round.’ We didn’t acquire a running back in the first round. We acquired an elite weapon to keep our offense explosive in the first round. We didn’t acquire an inside linebacker in the first round. We acquired a legit anchor to elevate our defense in the first round. So that’s what the ultimate goal is. That’s what our vision is. And we couldn’t be more excited with how the weekend went.”
Without question, it was an eventful 48 hours, as Holmes made a half-dozen trades while landing a handful of consensus top-50 prospects, a few of whom could be — and should be — immediate starters on a legitimate playoff contender this fall.
Swift swapped
Gibbs, an electrifying playmaker as a runner and receiver, was the first of those, of course, and because he was “the guy that we loved,” according to Holmes, it meant D’Andre Swift wouldn’t be around much longer.
That seemed obvious even before this draft, with Swift entering a contract year after three injury-riddled seasons in Detroit. And, really, the writing was on the wall going back to last summer when HBO’s “Hard Knocks” amplified some of the coaching staff’s frustrations with the former second-round pick. Then the Lions’ signed David Montgomery in free agency to replace Jamaal Williams, who’d taken over the starting backfield job last season.
Sunday, Holmes made it official, trading Swift to Philadelphia in exchange for a 2025 fourth-round pick and a swap of seventh-rounders this year. (The Lions used theirs to draft North Carolina receiver Antoine Green.)
The Lions GM called it “a win-win for all parties involved,” but it also was another loss for his predecessor, if you’re still keeping score. Of the 43 players drafted in Detroit by former Lions GM Bob Quinn from 2016-20, only nine remain on the roster, and two of those left in free agency only to re-sign here last month. A couple others probably won’t make the 53-man roster in September.
So this is clearly Holmes’ roster now, and it’s chock full of players who are casually referred to these days as “Dan Campbell guys.” That’s the phrase linebackers coach Kelvin Sheppard used to describe Iowa linebacker Jack Campbell, a player the Lions’ staff fell in love with in the pre-draft process and one who, not coincidentally, seemed to feel the same way.
More:The Detroit News’ complete Lions NFL Draft coverage
“What they’re all about, I’m all about, and that’s just a genuine passion for the game of football,” said Campbell, the Butkus Award winner and Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year. “Kind of an old-school, blue-collar mindset, and that’s maybe what they liked about me. I feel like that’s a perfect fit for Detroit.”
It should be, anyway. And the fact that you can go down the list and say much the same about every one of the players the Lions selected again this year tells you something about the vision and the plan and the shared philosophy that’s taking root here. Every NFL team talks about those things, but many don’t stick to their guns the way Holmes & Co. have thus far.
And whether it’s Brian Branch, the versatile Alabama defensive back who was one of Nick Saban’s favorites — “If you had ‘FOOTBALL PLAYER’ in black and white, that’s what he is — he plays the game how we play it,” Holmes said — or tight end Sam LaPorta, a co-captain with Campbell at Iowa who opted to play in the Music City Bowl a month after knee surgery because he didn’t want to let down his teammates, well, you get the idea.
“We find players that fit us,” Holmes said, “and what we’re about.”
And now that the table is set, we’re about to find out if all that excitement is justified. We’re about to find out if all those draft-room celebrations really will lead to something more, as Holmes put it Saturday night, “where we can get in the postseason, and hopefully make some noise.”
If so, it might be time to order some new office furniture.
john.niyo@detroitnews.com
Twitter.com: @JohnNiyo