Lions general manager Brad Holmes has built a dominant, surefire contender in Detroit.
His continued goal with the 2025 NFL Draft looming less than a week away is to keep it that way, making sure to avoid the pitfall of valuing immediate needs over landing the best players.
"I think you can get in trouble chasing needs sometimes, and then you're depending on a rookie," Holmes, whose seven draft picks start off at No. 28 overall, said Thursday. "You do the best you can, but nobody has a crystal ball. So, it can be a tough world to live in."
He added this about the lure of zoning in on quick dividends: "There's just a level of patience you have to (have). When you start chasing need, it's like that need might make sense for right now at this time. We make these picks for future investments. We kind of live in a society that everything is, 'Right now! Right now! Right now!'"
Detroit's most pressing concern at the moment is on the edge. The Lions were a bottom-10 team in sacks last season -- Aidan Hutchinson led the club (7.5 sacks) despite playing only five games. They re-signed Marcus Davenport, also injured early in 2024, but didn't add any premier pass-rushing pieces during free agency.
Given they pick so late in the first round, the Lions will largely be at the mercy of who ends up falling toward the end of Day 1, with no guarantee a game-changing edge prospect remains available.
The waiting game could change should Holmes trade up, something he hasn't shied away from in years past, though he recognizes it's always easier said than done.
"There's just some teams that don't want to go that far back," Holmes said. "It takes two. So, it's hard to say like, 'Man, we should do this.' And even if we do there's no telling that the other team is willing to go back."
Regardless, there are other positions Detroit would benefit from bolstering outside the obvious, even on a roster that went 15-2 last season. In a draft considered talent-rich in the trenches, the Lions could certainly use another guard, or perhaps they might look to enrich their secondary with more depth.
Although they've now been knocking on the door of a championship run the past two seasons, the Lions are more familiar than almost any other franchise with putting off instant gratification.
They had to wait 30 years between division titles before taking the NFC North in 2023, then repeating in 2024.
Holmes, along with head coach Dan Campbell, led them there, taking over a 5-11 team in 2021. His first year as GM resulted in a 3-13-1 record, but he practiced shrewdness and patience while building a resilient squad that's now gone 27-7 over the past two years.
He also provided perhaps the best recent example of adhering to "best player available" by selecting Jahmyr Gibbs at No. 12 overall in 2023, a question-raising move considering Detroit had other roster holes and already employed David Montgomery.
The Gibbs-Montgomery pairing has since become the league's finest one-two backfield punch, helping to power a Jared Goff-led offense that ranked first in scoring last season and fifth the year before.
Whatever Holmes does with the No. 28 pick, whether it's sticking and picking or using it to move around the board, he'll approach Thursday with that same type of philosophy that's turned his once-wayward Lions into the toast of the NFC North.
