Dave Birkett shares his thoughts on the Detroit Lions’ 1-1 start and Thursday’s disappointing 41-31 loss to the Buffalo Bills.
Lions are paying the price for their wasted 2024 draft
The six players the Lions drafted in the spring of 2024 have played a combined 86 snaps in two games this year: 44 on offense, 0 on defense and 42 on special teams. Fourth-round pick Sione Vaki has accounted for all but 11 of those snaps, and even if that number is somewhat skewed by the hip injury left guard Christian Mahogany suffered on the season’s second offensive series, it’s nowhere near where it would be if the Lions had hit on any of their top three picks.
That’s Terrion Arnold in Round 1 (plus the third-round pick the Lions used to move up that year), Ennis Rakestraw Jr. in Round 2 and Gio Manu in Round 4 (plus a future
third-rounder).
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Arnold is a Seattle Seahawk, on the commissioner’s exempt list and facing possible life in prison for his role in a kidnapping and armed robbery case in Florida this spring. Rakestraw hasn’t been active for a game yet this season despite the Lions’ struggles in the secondary. And Manu is on the nonfootball injury list with little reason to believe he’ll ever contribute on the offensive line.
Brad Holmes nailed his first three drafts as Lions general manager, taking star players (Penei Sewell and Aidan Hutchinson) with premium picks, unearthing mid-round gems like Amon-Ra St. Brown and Kerby Joseph, and acing 2023 by taking Jahmyr Gibbs, Jack Campbell, Sam LaPorta and Brian Branch in the first two rounds.
But Holmes’ whiffs to start 2024 have cost the Lions valuable depth at the positions they’re most strained at now.
Josh Allen (understandably) and Tyler Shough (less so) have had their way with an undermanned Lions secondary that features journeymen at most positions, and the Lions’ offensive line crumbled under the weight of injuries against the Bills, when they allowed four sacks, committed four false start or holding penalties and struggled to run the ball.
Because Holmes’ first three drafts were so good, and because the team is paying star money to Gibbs, Campbell, Hutchinson, Sewell, St. Brown and Jared Goff, among others, the Lions are stuck having replenish their depth through the draft. They can’t afford to overspend in free agency, and when they miss on players like Arnold, Rakestraw and Manu – plus miss out on using the two valuable third-round picks they dealt to acquire those players in trades – it creates a void on the roster that’s tough to fill.
Manu should have been the Lions’ fill-in right tackle when Blake Miller was out Thursday with a knee injury. Rakestraw should be in the playing rotation at cornerback, and in fairness to him, still could get there after his first two NFL seasons were derailed by injury. Arnold should be playing for his own contract extension, or at least helping the Lions secondary stay afloat while it awaits the return of Branch and Joseph.
None of those things happened, and the Lions’ margin for error continues to shrink because of their lack of depth.
Defend the D
The Lions have been bad on defense this year. Borderline atrocious.
They’ve allowed 71 points and 915 yards through two games, most of it in the past six quarters or so. Their 71 points allowed are the most they’ve given up to start a season since 2021. And in 15 drives since midway through the third quarter of their Week 1 win over the New Orleans Saints, they’ve allowed 10 touchdowns, one field goal, another missed goal, forced two punts and had a drive end on kneel-downs.
But for as many points as they’ve scored the first two weeks (62), the Lions haven’t been great on offense, either, and I thought it was telling Dan Campbell mentioned that side of the ball’s shortcomings early in his postgame news conference again Thursday.
“We knew we needed to score some points,” Campbell said. “We stalled out early in that game. That got us early. You’re down three scores and really we haven’t done anything offensively, and so a lot of that help needed to come there to be able to answer back.”
After the Saints game, Campbell said, “We were playing pretty good defense [to start the game]. We possessed the ball a little bit more in that first half, and then we fizzled on offense. And so, if I'm going one way or another, I'm like, man, we got to be more efficient on offense. We kind of spit and sputtered there, and then they get more cracks at it. And then they kind of found a little rhythm.”
Give the Lions credit for making plays down the stretch to beat the Saints, but they had one extended drive in regulation of that game, scored twice on short fields after turnovers and got a late field goal in the fourth quarter on a drive that started at the 50-yard line.
Against the Bills, the Lions went three-and-out on their first drive, gave up a sack and had a bad snap on their second and took the field for their third possession down 21-0.
They couldn’t run the ball in the second half, and they haven’t got much production from Jameson Williams or Isaac TeSlaa this year.
The Lions are talented enough offensively to stay in every game they play, but they need to be more efficient on offense and stop hurting themselves with self-inflicted mistakes.
Campell said he feels “really good” about the Lions’ chances to improve offensively, and he should. They have a new coordinator they’re still getting used to, they should get healthy on the line soon and they have a favorable upcoming schedule before the bye.
But this isn’t a case of the offense shouldering the load and the defense letting everyone done. There’s plenty of blame to go around on both sides.
“Run game’s got to be big for us, and it can’t just dissolve,” Campbell said. “It’s there one game and it dissolves the next game. We can’t play that game. We have to find a way to make that work and get ourselves going.”
Three-day weekend
The Lions have the weekend off after playing twice in five days, and Campbell said he’ll use the downtime to “figure [some stuff] out before we start getting ready for the Jets as a staff.”
“So now we can really digest, ‘All right, here’s our two-game snapshot, this is what you are, this says what you are and we can really deep dive these players and what they do best, what they don’t do or need help in and we’ll move on from that,’” he said.
I think the Lions still are a good team and legitimate threat to win the NFC North (maybe even the favorite, though Ben Johnson’s Chicago Bears can outscore anyone and that Minnesota Vikings defense is still good). But their defense is worse than I thought it’d be through two games and the offense is clearly working its way through some things, especially on the line.
The Lions have get-right games two of the next three weeks against the New York Jets and Arizona Cardinals, and a winnable road game against the Carolina Panthers in primetime in Week 4.
There’s no reason to sound any alarms yet, but they also haven’t looked anything like a team that can go on an extended playoff run.
“I don’t like losing like that,” Campbell said. “But I also know this is, we just finished Week 2, we’re 1-1 and we got a ton of room to grow. So that’s encouraging. And we got a minute to look at it. That helps, too. You get a couple of days here now to really look at it.”
Dave Birkett covers the Lions for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Bluesky, X and Instagram at @davebirkett.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Lions are paying the price for their wasted 2024 draft
