Yeah, he could be a little bigger, and he’d be the first to tell you that, and tell you that he’s looking to add a few pounds to help him handle the blows he’ll take as a running back in the NFL.
But right now, that’s quibbling, and speculation, and assuming we know what’s best for Jahmyr Gibbs when he hasn’t even put pads on for the Detroit Lions, let alone played a game. Oh, he will, though, and when he does, he’ll give the offense the kind of player it didn’t have a year ago.
D’Andre Swift was that in theory: see a gap, make a cut, go … 10, 15, 20 yards or more, whether taking a handoff or catching a swing pass out of the backfield. Swift just couldn’t stay healthy.
Even when he was, he didn’t have the elusiveness Gibbs showed at Alabama, and has shown in moments during the Lions’ minicamp last week.
So, no, Swift isn’t what Gibbs could be. He’s different. And those differences are why Brad Holmes and Dan Campbell (they’re a tandem) used a first-round pick to draft him.
What can he add to an offense that ranked among the best in the NFL last season?
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“A lot,” said Jared Goff, the man who should gain the most if Gibbs turns into the multi-dimensional difference-maker Holmes thinks he can be. “He can catch it. He can run it. We’re excited about him. He’s done a hell of a job as well as a rookie, learning, picking things up, asking the right questions and can do some special things with the ball in his hands, so we’re excited to do that.”
His former Alabama teammate, Jameson Williams, may have more straight-line speed than Gibbs, and almost everyone has more size — Gibbs is generously listed at 5 feet 9 and 200 pounds — but no one — NO ONE — stops, starts, changes direction and accelerates like this young fella.
And as good as the Lions offense was last fall, it sometimes had to work too hard for points, especially against the better defenses, as you might expect.
I’m thinking about the grind-out affairs against Dallas, say, or Green Bay the first time the teams met. Yes, the Lions beat the Packers, but explosive plays were hard to come by.
The best defenses make it tough to sustain long drives. The best offenses counter with big plays. Not necessarily 50-yard bombs, but 20-plus-yard bursts.
The Lions were more than solid in these sorts of plays. They just weren’t quite elite. It’s not an accident that two teams with the most “explosive” plays met in the Super Bowl: Kansas City and Philadelphia.
Obviously, the Lions defense needed to get better in order for the team to make a serious playoff run. But doubling down this offseason on the proven side of the ball happened because Holmes and Campbell aren’t just watching their own team.
They saw the playoffs. They scouted the teams that beat them with offense through the season. In the Super Bowl, the Eagles had the better defense, the Chiefs had the better offense.
A small sample size?
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Of course.
Yet it’s a similar sample every postseason and has been for a while. The math backs this up: drives that include an explosive play have a better chance of ending in a touchdown; and teams that have Patrick Mahomes have a better chance of winning the Super Bowl.
Now, before you say, “well duh,” allow me to point out that Mahomes won’t win the Super Bowl every season, and while title teams need to have reasonable defensive skill and ability — Kansas City doesn’t win without rush specialist Chris Jones — the best teams, and franchises, understand that a top-five offense one year doesn’t automatically carry over to the next.
And that if you’ve got a top-five offense, why not make it better?
Thus, Gibbs.
And Sam LaPorta, the rookie tight end of whom Gibbs said: “That’s my guy.” A guy whose been lighting it up in minicamp. Yes, it’s minicamp, or a pajama party, as Campbell likes to say.
Here’s what Goff had to say about the rookie tight end last week:
“Gets himself open. Able to separate, has great hands, is smart, is learning. Making rookie mistakes still but is getting a lot better and you don’t really see him make the same mistake twice, which is encouraging. But yeah, he’s done a hell of a job.”
Look, no one is saying LaPorta is Travis Kelce, or that Gibbs is Alvin Kamara. Wait, strike that. Some are suggesting Gibbs could be Kamara, or at least a facsimile of him, the kind of hybrid offensive talent that helped propel the Saints to the postseason for most of the last half decade.
Whether he is Kamara or not — Kamara is bigger, Gibbs faster — the Alabama rookie gives the Lions the sort of explosive player they didn’t have a year ago in the backfield, a player who can also line up at various receiver spots and even various backfield spots.
Gibbs is enjoying the crash course as he begins to learn the playbook and gain some chemistry with Goff. His elusiveness and speed should be particularly helpful with Williams out the first six games of the season because of a gambling infraction.
“I like how they are using me,” he said.
This week, he and the rest of the rookies and various other young players will finish up OTAs without the veterans. Then it’s his turn for a break until training camp begins in late July.
He will head to Florida for more training, play a little Madden, and work to gain a touch of weight to help prepare for the season and for a level of football he can’t quite imagine just yet.
“The defense reacts faster here,” he said.
That much he knows. He also knows what he brings and what he can do for an offense that already is one of the best in the league.
“We can be even more dominant,” he said.
If he is who Holmes and Campbell think he is, then why not?
Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor.