Before Brad Holmes left his house on Day 3 of the NFL draft, his 4-year-old son told him, “Daddy, I saw you on TV.”
Great, Holmes thought. “And what was Daddy doing?” he asked.
“He said, ‘You were beating the table, you gave a high-five, you hugged somebody and you were in glasses,'” Holmes said.
Holmes’ draft day celebrations have been a sight to behold the past few years, even for his own family.
In 2021, he hugged Lions president Rod Wood so hard he nearly spun Wood to the ground. In 2022, with less mystery about who he would take at No. 2, he slapped the table in approval three times when the Jacksonville Jaguars turned in their card, leaving Aidan Hutchinson on the board.
And Thursday, after landing Alabama running back Jahmyr Gibbs with the 12th overall pick, Holmes slammed the table in front him, let out a guttural scream and accidentally elbowed Lions coach Dan Campbell hard enough that Campbell retreated to the back of the room grabbing his sternum.
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“I don’t think I gave Dan much, but I probably gave him more than thought I was able to,” Holmes joked Saturday. “But I still don’t want to be in a cage match with him.”
Holmes’ exburance is the byproduct of accomplishment. He was a draft nerd as a kid, is living his dream building the Lions now and has been genuinely excited to add Sewell, Hutchinson and Gibbs to his roster.
“I told myself and I told the others in the room I was going to be more disciplined, but I guess I just can’t state it or emphasize it enough that we draft players that we love,” Holmes said. “And when you’re able to acquire them and you get them, sometimes you just really can’t control the emotion and it’s just genuine, it’s authentic. And when you find that guy that you love and that’s a fit for what we’re about and what our culture is and what we want our football team to look like, you just really can’t — you really can’t control the emotions.”
It’s with that as a launching point that I hand out my annual draft grade, an exercise in futility, for sure, but one done with the intent of capturing the value of what the Lions did with each of their draft picks rather than predicting the future accomplishments of their new players.
Holmes and his staff, like others around the NFL, know these players and why they picked them far better than I or anyone else in the media ever could. And Holmes’ reaction is evidence of just how thrilled he was to land Gibbs at 12.
I like Gibbs as a player. I think he’ll be a very good pro. He was one of the best receiving backs in this year’s draft and as Holmes said Saturday, he has the chance to be “an elite weapon to keep our offense explosive” for years to come.
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But the reality of the NFL and how it’s changed in recent years is that the Lions did overvalue their first two picks, Gibbs and Jack Campbell, an off-ball linebacker who should be a Day 1 starter and without question improves one of the weakest positions on the Lions’ roster, compared to the rest of the league.
Gibbs likely would have been a first-round pick had the Lions passed on him at 12, and he might even have gone in the teens. His former running backs coach at Georgia Tech (where he went to school before he transferred to Alabama) told me Friday he heard from six NFL running back coaches who hoped Gibbs would be there for them to take later in the first round.
Campbell, similarly, could have gone in the back half of Round 1 had the Lions not taken him at 18, though I suspect the Lions could have got him at Pick No. 34 early in the second round — a pick Holmes acquired by dealing down from six.
Holmes was a magician working the board Thursday and Friday, dealing up and down and adding picks and moving into position to walk away with an eight-player class that filled most of his team’s top needs. He took Iowa tight end Sam LaPorta early in Round 2, traded up to draft Alabama slot cornerback Brian Branch a few picks later, and grabbed developmental Tennessee quarterback Hendon Hooker early in Round 3 after two trades down.
That’s a nice quintet of players, all of whom ranked on NFL Network analyst Daniel Jeremiah’s top-50 prospect list. But with five of the top 81 picks entering the draft, the Lions should have landed that type of class anyway, and had they been more particular about positional value, they might have been able to do that and add impact players.
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Tyree Wilson, Jalen Carter and the draft’s best running back, Bijan Robinson, were available at six had Holmes stayed put. (I’m not in the never-draft-a-running-back-in-Round-1 camp, by the way; it just has to be the right three-down back and the right contending team.) At 12, the Lions passed on cornerback Christian Gonzalez and pass rusher Lukas Van Ness, and at 18 they left the likes of Calijah Kancey, Deonte Banks and Myles Murphy on the board.
Pairing two of that group together with a Day 2 linebacker (Trenton Simpson, Drew Sanders) or running back (Zach Charbonnet, Devon Achane) would have provided more value and upside, though clearly not the players the Lions desired.
Ultimately, as Holmes has said often, the draft is about getting the best players that fit your program, not the best players on some pundit’s list. Holmes referenced his draft class’s “high floor” several times Saturday, and the Lions clearly valued adding that to their contending team over the higher ceiling others would have provided in what was considered a mediocre overall draft.
So Holmes is right to love what he did in the draft, and the group of players he added. His first four picks should play significant minutes as rookies, Hooker is a scratch-off lottery ticket that may or may not hit, and he finished by taking three role players that only the most ardent draft fans had probably heard of.
I like what the Lions did, too, even if it wasn’t what I would have done. I gave them a B for the weekend and how they used their resources, but there’s no denying they got good players who will make them a better team this fall.
That’s the most important thing in any draft, and that’s what Holmes’ son saw on the video that went viral last week.
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.