Brad Holmes explains his thought process behind drafting Jahmyr Gibbs
Detroit Lions GM Brad Holmes doesn't do a whole lot of media outside of the press conferences he does a few times a year and the occasional TV spot during the combine. On Wednesday morning he joined Peter Schrager on his podcast The Season. One of the big highlights of this interview was listening to […]
Detroit Lions GM Brad Holmes doesn't do a whole lot of media outside of the press conferences he does a few times a year and the occasional TV spot during the combine. On Wednesday morning he joined Peter Schrager on his podcast The Season. One of the big highlights of this interview was listening to Holmes thought process behind drafting Jahmyr Gibbs and his thought process behind the entire draft.
"Bottom line, is you just got to get the guys that you want." Holmes said. "And I kind of look at, especially this past draft, you know, everybody was saying like, this is a different draft is a different draft. Well, this call what it is, it just wasn't as strong of a draft as it normally is. you know, in a normal year, you had like true first round talent players, you might have about 17 or 18. Guys, I really haven't seen any higher than 20. And all the years that I've been doing it. This is, we ended up with 14 guys. And that was at the very end, it was less than that. At one point. Like at one point, we had like nine or 10."
Holmes is right. This draft wasn't the deepest draft in history. But the Lions managed to pick out 14 guys that they liked. Dan Campbell alluded to this list early during the combine when he mentioned that the Lions had met with 30 guys and had only identified four that they felt had the it factor.
It seems like Gibbs is one of those guys. Holmes fell in love with him pretty early in the process. When Is ay pretty early in the process, I mean last September when Alabama played Texas.
"I kind of got tipped off about him, like right before the start of the game. And I was like, okay, and I saw his body type and initially, I was intrigued. And then I kind of saw what he was doing in both phases. Yeah, I mean, he can run it, but what he was doing as a receiver and the explosiveness, and everything about them, and we just kept doing work on them. And like I said, kind of do some draft prep during the season and kept doing work on him. And that was just kind of it for me. I was like, This guy's in, he's a weapon. He's a weapon. And, you know, we talked about all the running backs going in the first round, and all that kind of stuff. You know, I always say like, if he's a weapon, then forget the RB position. we thought he was a multi phase elite explosive position-less weapon."
That's the assumption that most have gone with since Gibbs was drafted and we've seen some of that at play during OTA's and mini camp, but Holmes confirms it here. This is how the Lions look at Gibbs. He has no real position. He is a weapon. He's weapon that was always on the Lions list. The goal for Holmes was go get Gibbs and anyone else on that list and get the hell out of there. Holmes compared this years draft to a famous scene from the Denzel Washington classic Training Day.
"You know, he goes into this, you know, the rough area, and he goes this lady's house and takes his money. And then he goes out and him and Ethan Hawke are trying to get out of the neighborhood and the girl comes out there and rats him out says, Hey, this guy just took our money and Denzel's just in this shoot out, and he just shooting out trying to get out of the neighborhood. And he's basically shooting his way out of there. And I was like that draft is kind of that. Just get who we want and just shoot our way out of here and get on out of there. And we're just ecstatic about how the whole thing went down."
This was a phenomenal interview and I highly recommend everyone. He touches on drafting Jack Campbell, retaining Ben Johnson and ton of other things. Check it out.
Featured image by Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
