Detroit Lions general manager Brad Holmes spoke for over 40 minutes on Thursday to recap the 2025 season and look ahead to the 2026 offseason. Here are the biggest takeaways from the press conference.
Note: I am not including Holmes’ comments on David Montgomery. Those were covered in a separate piece here.
Brad Holmes admits to mistakes… but doesn’t specify which ones
Many fans were hoping Brad Holmes would take some culpability for the team’s failures in 2025 after he had taken a rather confident attitude in previous years. The Lions general manager did… sort
of. He said unequivocally that this year was a disappointment, failure, and—like Dan Campbell—gave himself an F for the year, because “it was either good enough or not good enough, and it’s not good enough.”
Holmes said when failure happens, he looks to himself first, and even admitted there were things he’s already identified as mistakes he’s made.
“I’m always going to look inward. Early stages, but already started to identify some things that I can definitely do better,” Holmes said.
However, Holmes declined to specify what mistakes he’s made, and he pretty much rebuffed any suggestions made by the media.
[Note: questions here are paraphrased. Answers are direct quotes.]
Would you have changed anything about how you responded to Frank Ragnow’s retirement?
“I think we did the best we could with everything that we were trying to do from a roster standpoint.”
Did you do enough at offensive line?
“I don’t think that we’ve ever gone into an offseason with a question mark or a hole that we didn’t attack that position with urgency. But sometimes it just doesn’t work out as well as we hoped.”
What about EDGE?
“We just couldn’t — It just didn’t come together like how we would have liked it to be, from a draft standpoint.”
Holmes will keep on drafting developmental players if they fit
Some, myself very much included, have wondered if Holmes has taken on unnecessary risks in the draft by drafting highly-developmental prospects like Hendon Hooker, Brodric Martin, Colby Sorsdal, Giovanni Manu, and even Isaac TeSlaa. Despite some misses within those picks, Holmes doesn’t appear to be swayed from that strategy if the player still fits their character and talent requirements.
“As long as they’re made up of the right kind of stuff, that’s really — I think that’s the main thing that matters,” Holmes said. “Yeah, there’s a baseline of talent that you have to have for this league, but they have to have the right temperament, the right intangible qualities, they have to have the right football character.”
He doesn’t believe he’s not aggressive
At two different points in his press conference, Holmes was asked if he intends on being more aggressive or urgent with the team after what is being perceived as a lack of splashy free agency or trade deadline moves this past year. Holmes essentially pushed back on any complacency criticisms, saying that there are a lot of moves the team tried to make last season, but the deal just never came together.
“I don’t think that we’ve like not tried to be aggressive, or just being aggressive just to say we’re being aggressive,” Holmes said. “Usually, when those kinds of moves happen, usually there is a deficiency that’s clear and that team needs to act on that. When we’ve had deficiencies, we’ve tried to act on things. Some of them just didn’t come together, but we didn’t want to settle or reach.
He also warned that they may make some moves this offseason that aren’t the headline-making type.
“Honestly, a lot of the things that we’ll look at, and a lot of the changes and tweaks and adjustments that we will make probably won’t come with a headline,” Holmes said. “That’s not to say that we won’t do something that’s in that ‘splash’ category, but it’s not indicative of a lack of effort, work ethic.”
The Detroit Lions are in the market for a center
With the unclear future of Graham Glasgow, the Lions will have to figure out their center position, as they continue to search for answers after Frank Ragnow’s retirement in 2025.
Second-round pick Tate Ratledge began training camp at center before the team quickly moved him to guard, where he stayed all season. Holmes admitted that moving Ratledge back to center is still on the table, and he was encouraged by what he saw during OTAs and training camp.
“He’s done it before, he did it in OTAs, didn’t think that he was a fish out of water,” Holmes said. “And then all of the reps that he’s logged this year, just all the rookie snaps, he may have played the most snaps of any rookie on this year. So whether he continues that guard or center, but we know that he’s an option.”
But, more importantly, Holmes said that is a position they will look to add this offseason.
“We’re definitely going to have to continue to look for one whether it be the free agency, the draft or a trade.”
What the Lions are looking for in their next OC
The Lions’ offensive coordinator search is underway, and there are already two candidates on the board: former Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel and Commanders QB coach David Blough.
Holmes offered his ideas on what the team is looking for in their next offensive coordinator, mentioning that they will consider both coaches with and without play-calling experience and look both inside and out of the organization. What they will prioritize more than anything else, it sounds like, is fit within the team.
“There has to be leadership, there has to be detail-oriented, he’s gotta be able to (have) command over the room,” Holmes said. “You just have to be able to know that there’s somebody that’s gonna be able to dot every ‘I’ and cross every ‘T,’ and make sure that nothing is compromised from the detail standpoint, from the standard standpoint, from the start of the game-planning period all the way to the end of the week.”
The Lions don’t need “deep surgery”
Unsurprisingly, when asked how far off the Lions were from Super Bowl contention, Holmes said, “I don’t think that we’re that far off.” But he also noted that they need to make sure they don’t veer too far off course just because they think they’re close to contention.
“Maybe that is one of the items that needs to be looked back on, is thinking that you are so close and so now you start changing some things because you only need this piece, you only need that piece,” Holmes said. “And it’s like, ‘Naw, uh-uh.’ Like, who’s the best player to fit for what we’re trying to do that has gotten us to have the expectations that we have as a football team right now.
Ultimately he concluded:
“I do not think that this is a deep surgery, overhaul. I don’t think that. But obviously, there needs to be some adjustments made for sure.”
