Lions general manager Brad Holmes spoke for than 11 minutes at his end-of-season press conference Monday before taking a question. Suffice to say, the NFL Executive of the Year had some things to get off chest.
To wit: where are the haters now?
After the Lions won their first division title in 30 years and fell 30 minutes shy of their first-ever trip to the Super Bowl in year three under Holmes and Dan Campbell, Holmes brought everyone back to his first draft class in Detroit -- which produced two first-team All-Pros and five starters on this year's team that won a franchise-best 14 games. As Holmes recalls, opinions varied on the initial batch of players he brought in.
"Each pick from that draft was very intentional. I go back to that, for one, it was 2021. We just finished the 2023 season. That’s when you’re supposed to grade a draft. Not the day after a draft," said Holmes. "When you look back at those picks, those picks were not welcome by many in this room."
He pointed to one reporter and said, "You wanted us to pick a quarterback, you didn’t want us to pick Penei Sewell." He later pointed to another, brought up Ifeatu Melifonwu and said, "I know you said that was a miss." He said that "people didn’t want us to wait until the fourth round to draft a wide receiver," which turned out to be superstar Amon-Ra St. Brown, and that "people didn’t want to wait on a Derrick Barnes to develop," the linebacker who delivered the game-winning pick that sent the Lions to the NFC title game this season.
When another reporter later brought up the picks in Detroit's most recent draft class that weren't "well received by everybody," Holmes fired back, "Everybody, or you included?" Holmes was panned, particularly nationally, for supposedly ignoring positional value by drafting a running back and a linebacker in the first round, followed by a tight end and a defensive back in the second. He wound up with two Offensive Rookie of the Year finalists in Jahmyr Gibbs and Sam LaPorta and two starters on defense in Jack Campbell and Brian Branch for his troubles.
Holmes said that he wasn't "up here to give I-told-you-so’s," then added, "The 'I told you so' is when we selected a player."
"All the criticism that came and transpired the day after the draft or the week after, you can’t be a prisoner of the moment," said Holmes. "You can’t let that affect you. You just gotta weather the post-draft storm. Me and Dan had all the confidence in the world in those players. They did what we expected them to do. Those players we selected, they were our favorite players in the draft. I know it was a big thing about tight end, I think it’s been on record that Sam LaPorta was our No. 1 tight end. No, he was one of our favorite players in the entire draft. When you have that kind of conviction on players, you can sleep good. Look, like I said, grade the 2021 Draft. Grade that."
Holmes then reminded the media what he said in the wake of last year's draft: "We acquire the players that we acquire because we’re trying to win games. When that time comes around, the critics or whoever it is, I think they’ll be happy with what they see on the field this year."
"But that’s not entertaining to write about that stuff," he said Monday. "The criticism, ‘Oh, that’s a D, that’s an F, what are they doing?’ that’s entertaining. It’s clicks. And I don’t undermine that. Whether it’s free agency, the draft, I don’t overlook that it’s the entertainment business ... and fans want to click on the stuff that’s newsworthy. Saying that, ‘Man, the Detroit Lions were very intentional, very careful and selective with their picks,' that’s not going to get the clicks."
For Holmes, the instant backlash is one thing. He knows that it comes with the territory of running an NFL team. What really seemed to bother him this season is that very few of the media members who claimed he was wrong for drafting the players he did ever admitted they were wrong. They just went on covering his team, and his terrific rookie class, like they never said anything in the first place.
"My only thing is, I’m big on accountability," said Holmes. "And I think you all would expect me to be accountable when I’m up here when things don’t go right. And I am. I feel I’m a very accountable person. When you heard so much negativity about our draft and then when I said, ‘Look, wait until they start playing football, you’ll be appreciative,' when they started playing football and people started giving them credit, the negativity, everybody forgot about it. I give probably two people credit in this room that said, ‘You know what? I was wrong, I was wrong.’ And I appreciate that. I respected that.
Holmes went on to say that certain reporters "knew they were wrong" only to say, "Man, these rookies are playing so well." Or that some reporters would reference how "'many people gave (the Lions) backlash' ... and I'm really just like, 'No, you gave them backlash.'"
"So just having accountability, that’s all it is," said Holmes. "But, again, I’m not here to (say) ‘I told you so.' 'I told you so' was when we selected the players."