With less than a week to go until the 2021 NFL Draft, teams have officially entered prime smokescreen season. Outside of the Jaguars openly acknowledging that they'll draft Clemson QB Trevor Lawrence, not a whole lot is set in stone. That's especially true in Detroit, where first-year GM Brad Holmes has kept the team's plan for the 7th overall pick close to the chest.
However, on Friday afternoon, in a pre-draft press conference, Holmes dropped a little bit of information on how the team has approached the pick up to this point.
"Well, I will say it's of extreme value. Whenever you're picking in the top 10, obviously it's an extremely valuable pick," he said. "It's very exciting to be looking at this crop of players that would be worthy of selecting. Obviously where I just came from [LA Rams], I wasn't really used to picking in the first round that much. But at 7 we do have a cluster of players that we're comfortable with picking.
"At the same time, we would be very prepared and also willing to move in either direction. We're still open in those regards, but there are a cluster of players that we'd be comfortable with."
Holmes was then pressed more on how seriously the team was actually prepared to move in either direction, to which he confirmed that they have spoken to other teams about the idea. (It's obviously not a lot to go on but you take what you can get at this point.)
"There has been discussions with other teams," he said. "I will keep those in-house, but yeah, there has been discussions."
Holmes added that if they do pick at seven, they plan to prioritize a cultural fit more than anything schematic.
"Regardless of scheme -- and obviously scheme does play a part -- at the end of the day, if a player has certain standards of toughness, passion, if a player has grit, that doesn't have anything to do with if a guy's a press corner or an off-zone quarters corner ... does the guy play hard or does he not? Does he have a high motor or doesn't he? Does he take plays off or does he not? Does he love football or does he not? Those are the standards that we look for."
