Aaron Glenn still texts with Jeff Okudah, a relationship built on mutual respect. He's not Okudah's coach anymore, but Glenn remains in his corner. He still sees greatness in the fellow cornerback and former third overall pick who never panned out with the Lions.
"I don’t look at it as it not working out," Glenn said Thursday. "I look at it as him getting a better opportunity somewhere else, and that happens across this league. There are some guys that are drafted to a team where, man, it just doesn’t work out, but then they go somewhere else and become Pro Bowlers and All-Pros."
Traded by the Lions to the Falcons this offseason, Okudah will make his return to Detroit Sunday -- and likely his season debut. He's been sidelined since injuring his foot in training camp, but he's practiced this week. Injuries, of course, were a big part of Okudah's undoing in Detroit. He was slowed by groin and core issues in year one, then felled by a torn Achilles in year two.
Year three started promisingly for Okudah, before he faded down the stretch. He spent his final game with the Lions on the bench.
"I think as a competitor, you naturally have a game like this circled,” Okudah said this week. “The environment is going to be crazy … So, I mean, I can’t wait."
“It’ll be good to see him," said Glenn. "... He has all the physical traits that you look for at that position and he works his butt off. I know for a fact he’s doing that down there because he gets a second chance and we text each other quite a bit. We still have a good relationship.”
Okudah, 24, admits that going from Ohio State to the Lions -- Matt Patricia's Lions -- was a culture shock. He lost five games combined in three seasons with the Buckeyes. He lost 11 in his first season in Detroit and never found his footing in the worst defense in the NFL. He also clashed with the coaching staff on whether he needed surgery to fix a lingering injury from his college days. (He did.) Patricia and Bob Quinn, the GM who had made Okudah the highest-drafted corner this century, were fired midway through their third straight last-place season.
Okudah views his time with the Lions as "a lot of lessons learned."
"You get rid of that utopia mindset that things will always go perfect and try to just take things as they come. In this game there’s a lot of competitors, so things might not always go your way. It’s just how you respond, how you bounce back from all that," he said.
There was hope that Okudah would realize his potential under Glenn, a former Pro Bowl corner, Dan Campbell and the rest of the Lions' new regime. It just wasn't meant to be. When the Lions traded him this spring for a fifth-round pick, GM Brad Holmes said it was time for both sides to move on. Okudah says he has "no hard feelings, honestly" toward Detroit and "in retrospect, I'm just really glad to be here (in Atlanta)."
“So I guess you could say it worked well for both sides," he said.