On Monday, the Los Angeles Rams made a blockbuster trade for Myles Garrett. In the offseason, a move like that draws Super Bowl-winning headlines, with just about every NFL columnist now crowning the Rams as the heavy favorite to be next the champion. It also draws the envy of 31 other fanbases, watching a different team make yet another aggressive move to give their team the best chance to win a Super Bowl this year.
Detroit Lions fans certainly fall amongst this group. After a very modest offseason
and a lack of “blockbuster” moves over the past few years, you can sense many within this fanbase are getting restless. Following a season in which they missed the playoffs entirely, some are beginning to seriously question whether general manager Brad Holmes is doing enough to finally bring a Super Bowl to Detroit.
Is that fair?
On this week’s PODcast, we revisit the age old debate of home growing your talent vs. going “all-in” with aggressive trades. Do both sides have merit? Can there be a healthy balanced between the two?
Three years ago, the Lions were a half away from the Super Bowl. Two years ago, they were the best team in football for the regular season. After one season of failure—in which they lost both coordinators, had their All-Pro center retire, and suffered the second-most defensive injuries of any team over the last 25 years—is it time to really throw away the Lions’ current strategy?
Beyond that, we also talk about the feasibility of a trade like this for the Lions right now. For one, we need to get straight that the Lions’ quite simply could not have pulled off the Garrett trade themselves. They didn’t have the critical piece like Jared Verse who is not only an extremely young, Pro Bowl talent at a premier position, but he’s also costing the Rams a negligible amount of dead cap by trading him (around $4 million total over two years). Detroit’s only young, cheap talent on his level are Jahmyr Gibbs, Brian Branch, and Sam LaPorta—only Gibbs likely comes close to Verse’s value right now. Instead, the Lions would’ve had to sweeten the pot with another high draft pick—likely another first—and the move would still require some salary cap gymnastics to fit Garrett on the roster.
But that doesn’t mean Detroit couldn’t have been more aggressive than they have been. So on this week’s show, we debate whether the Lions need to turn up the aggressiveness more than they have.
However, we kick off the show with our biggest takeaways from Week 1 of Detroit Lions OTAs, including a different Dan Campbell than we’re used to seeing, injury updates, and some early depth chart setting.
Enjoy the episode below or on whatever podcasting platform you prefer, by searching “Pride of Detroit.”
If you want some bonus content and to see our pretty faces, you can catch a longer episode of the show over on our YouTube page or Twitch channel.
