POLL Lions Draft Grade 2024

[VulturesRule]

The draft is behind and UDFA season is in full swing. The Lions’ earned the 29th pick starting position by taking the NFC North. Let’s take the temperature of those board members, from the draft gurus to the casual observer, and see the initial reaction from the fan base For this year. Straight letter grades, no pluses or minuses.

For reference, last year the median and grade was a C - basically, Meh. Got a feeling that grade may have raised a little as the year went on. Then again, Kicker is still a position that not many people have a lot of confidence in (apparently including Dan Campbell). And I thought you had Brad and Dan on speed dial, Smitty.

 

[VulturesRule]

In looking over what they put together versus what it cost, I gave them a B. Granted, I’m not in the draft room, don’t get the chatter going on between teams, hell I wasn’t even in the crowd. Seems to me that some of the moves up spent draft capital for little return.

I’ll happily be wrong at the end of the year when some of those moves pan out and the Lions are NFC North champions again. Not really an eat crow situation, though (re: see the 2023 Draft Poll).

 

[Thruthefog]

This was my favorite of all of Holmes drafts. Especially Arnold and Vaki.

The only pick that I'm not that high on is Rakestraw.

 

[Old Lion]

I loved the draft except the 2nd round. Maybe I dont see the whole plan yet so I could be missing something. The other thing I dont like is we are overpaying when we trade up. I am all for getting a top 10 guy later then he should go buy trading up but the pick swap should be appropriate and the last 2 years it has not. We are slowly losing draft capital. Last year was not terrible as it only cost us a 4th moving from this year to next year. Now we have moved further down the road again where we dont have a 3rd next year and our extra 4th is now an extra 7th. We are slowly giving up more and more capital in future years. I give it a B+ though as of now because of that. It would easily be an A- otherwise

 

[VulturesRule]

Thanks to all that contributed a vote to this year’s draft poll. Some things stand out:

1) The mean and median rose from a solid C to a solid B.
2) The number of participants declined from eleven to seven, or roughly by one third.
3) No one gave the Lions a negative grade.

It’s a small sample size to be sure. My casual observance is that as the team improves, the participation on the opinion board drops. That’s based on no data, and doesn’t take into account outside influences. I’m hoping that as we go into the 2024 season, more Lions fans hop on this board.

 

[Edonidd]

Sorry. Been busy. I would have given a very thorough "Meh." Bordering on a D actually.

I thought at the time, and still think now that last years players were fine (although i was proven wrong for thinking there were better TE's than LaPorta.) But then and now i thought there were better values to be had.

This year I think last year's success went to their heads. I understand going up to get your guy in round 1, when you see 2 guys falling and you like both. Then when 1 of them goes, you go up and get the other. Position you needed help with, all that. Second round BPA makes that first round trade price look worse in hindsight. But hoping for 2 starters and I guess that would make it a successful draft.

After the first 2 rounds I pretty much don't like anything they did. Paying big prices in trade, giving away future picks. Taking a guy who absolutely has to stay on the 53 man roster, but isn't ready to play yet is always costly. Maybe even multiple years before he's ready to play NFL football. Then I'm assuming they got cute and grabbed a primary special teams player? A decent safety that played like 4 games at RB? I'm guessing it has to be the Lions leaning into the new kickoff rules. I made a whole long feeling post about Khalif Raymond being a starting WR for us right now. Unless there's more going on with trade discussions we don't know about I see no reason not to be terrified by that.

If Manu is the next Jason Peters then it saves the whole draft obviously. Ultimately the draft is about selecting players, so as long as they guys they do pick are spectacular, things kind of sort themselves out. It just feels like there's room for improvement at all the other parts of the draft, the non player selection part.

 

[broncosmitty]

I was the lone Meh vote.

 

[Old Lion]

Thanks to all that contributed a vote to this year’s draft poll. Some things stand out:

1) The mean and median rose from a solid C to a solid B.
2) The number of participants declined from eleven to seven, or roughly by one third.
3) No one gave the Lions a negative grade.

It’s a small sample size to be sure. My casual observance is that as the team improves, the participation on the opinion board drops. That’s based on no data, and doesn’t take into account outside influences. I’m hoping that as we go into the 2024 season, more Lions fans hop on this board.

That is because there were a lot of miserable shitheads that took joy in the Lions sucking because it made their miserable lives look not so bad.

Good riddance to those types.

 

[jayfan]

C- draft.

Even if the guys they drafted work out, that's only half the story. Way too many trade-ups. And reckless, goofy trade-ups, at that. Holmes was treating draft picks like candy canes instead of valuable resources.

Arnold is a fine get at 24. But to give away pick #73 to move up 5 spots when every CB is still on the board is nuts. And to add insult to injury, Bebee was taken with our pick at 73. Arnold has to turn out to be waaaay better than all the other CB's sitting there at 29 for that move to be a win.

Then they trade away another 3rd rounder - next year's - for the privilege to take another Brodric Martinesque raw project (Holmes' words, not mine) from a community college in British Columbia. Just foolish. Holmes thinks he's running with a roster like the 80's Niners or the 90's Cowboys. He's not.

How many more trade-ups were there? At least one. And then there were the trade-up Holmes attempted unsuccessfully. Give me a break.