I know the Detroit Lions are on the precipice of much bigger things right now, but this one is for me Lions fans. I love the NFL Draft. It used to be the thing I stayed away from, but now I'm a little obsessed with it. Since college football's regular season is over, I figured now would be a good time to put out my first mock draft of the year. This will probably be the last one until February. 

I'm doing it now because with the nature of bowl games these days, a lot of guys that are hoping to play in the pros are just sitting those games out. The year is done. Let's jump into it with a trade-down. 

Trade

Brad Holmes teased trading down out of the first round like 28 times last year. There's some sarcasm there, but he did it a lot. This year he's going to go ahead and make that a reality. Here's the trade that went down. 

Lions get: 40th pick and 77th pick

Patriots get: 32nd pick and a 2026 fourth-round pick

The Lions are a team that is largely set right now. That's why the team has some leeway to make moves like this because they're no longer really drafting primarily for starters. They're drafting to fill out the team with depth and then develop guys for late. That's what I had in mind with this deal, plus I wanted to get back into the third-round because Detroit traded away their third last year. 

40th pick: Elic Ayomanor, WR, Stanford

 I know Lions fans are going to want an edge rusher and that’s going to happen but looking at the immediate future shows me Hutchinson, Smith, Paschal, and Onwuzurike and I don’t think it’s as immediate of a need as it might seem to be. Still, don’t worry, it’s happening.

I went with Ayomanor first because this team still needs that third receiver who can do all the things that Josh Reynolds did for them. Tim Patrick is awesome and I love what he's brought to the team, but the fact of the matter is that he's 31-years-old right now. He's not likely to be long for this team. He might get another year in Detroit, but Ayomanor is the future. He can come in and do what Patrick and Reynolds could do and he can do it better and longer.

64th pick: Jack Sawyer, Edge, Ohio State

Here you go. I told you that I would get an edge rusher. Sawyer has been pretty good for the Buckeyes in the last four years and he has kind of that Aidan Hutchinson type work ethic to him. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t the second coming of Hutch, but this is a Dan Campbell guy. A team captain with an attitude. Yeah, that fits. 

On the field Sawyer hasn't racked up all the sacks, but he's been a tremendous run stopper and he gets pressures in the pass rush game. He had 42 of them this season. That's not too bad for a second-round pick. 

77th pick: Jaxson Dart, QB, Ole Miss

Look, I know Lions fans like Hendon Hooker. I totally get it because he was awesome in his final year at Tennessee. There are just a lot of issues there though. The big one is that he is going to be 27-years-old in just a few weeks and he has yet to really play the NFL game. He has a few preseason games against third-stringers and some fourth quarters where the Lions don’t let him throw the ball.

This all comes after a summer of the Lions telling us that they don't think he's ready to be the backup quarterback and that the team may carry three guys. I mean this comes down to the day before final cutdowns. Hooker is not the future for this team. He'll be 30 when his rookie deal is up. He can be a great backup, but why wait for the guy of the future? 

Dart is 21-years-old and has one hell of an arm that if channeled right, can be dangerous in this league. He also has the ability to be mobile as well. Give him a few years under Campbell, Brunell, and Goff, and by 2028, you could have a guy who's ready to take over this franchise.  

131st pick: Jah Joyner, Edge, Minnesota

Doubling up on edge rushers here. I like the group the Lions have but you can never be too deep there. We’ve definitely learned that this season.

Joyner has a bull rush that is just hard to stop. He needs to work on some other moves, but this guy can move at 6-foot-5 and 265 pounds. All you see on the tape is offensive linemen just hanging on for dear life. I like the potential here with him learning from Lions defensive line coach Terrell Williams. 

195th pick: Joshua Gray, Guard, Oregon State

Some offensive line depth is always a good thing to have. The Lions took Christian Mahogany last April and he is expected to be one of the starters at some point when Kevin Zeitler and/or Graham Glasgow are done. Gray is a guy that could be in that other spot. The other good thing is that Gray can also play left tackle. He starter there for 44 games at Oregon State. Positional versatility is always something you want to have.  

227th pick: Thor Griffith, DT, Louisville

This feels like a little bit of a steal here. Griffith isn’t a first-round guy or a day-two guy, but he could probably go higher than this. Since he was here, I had to take him. Plus his name is Thor. 

The Lions have a solid duo in Alim McNeill and DJ Reader and they have Brodric Martin,m who they're working up, but more depth is always a good thing. Griffith is a good run-stopper who has a little bit of pass-rush juice as well. 

247th pick: Power Echols, LB, North Carolina

The Lions flat-out love linebackers. They are constantly looking for more. Out of every position this team added more players in this year, linebacker was the one that got filled the most. 

So here's another linebacker to join the group. The is a guy who has some good coverage skills and has good sideline-to-sideline speed for run-stopping. The problem is that he is small. He's just 6-feet tall and 225 pounds. That's why he's getting picked in the seventh-round.