On Sunday, news emerged regarding draft prospect Rueben Bain’s involvement in a fatal car crash in 2024. It prompted crowing from some NFL insiders who claimed that they knew all about it — but inexplicably failed to do their job of, you know, reporting it to their audiences.
Regardless, it’s apparently old news. (I didn’t know about it, or you would have seen it here.)
On Monday, Lions G.M. Brad Holmes confirmed that his team was aware of the situation.
“We’ve known that for a while, so that doesn’t really change anything from our standpoint,” Holmes said.
If all teams knew, it really doesn’t matter. The fact that it has become public, however, could prompt some owners to become uncomfortable with drafting him in a premier spot. And he could potentially slide a bit.
Like Jalen Carter did in 2023. The top-five prospect landed at No. 9. And the Eagles had no qualms about taking the two-time Pro Bowler and 2023 defensive rookie of the year finalist.
It still remains amazing that no one reported it. It’s obviously newsworthy. Why didn’t anyone who knew about it report it?
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Chris Payton-Jones, a former cornerback in the NFL and UFL, has died. He was 30.
Via Justin Barney of News4Jax, Payton-Jones was involved in a car accident on Saturday night.
Undrafted out of Nebraska in 2018, Payton-Jones played for the Cardinals, Lions, Vikings, and Titans. He appeared in 29 regular-season games, with six starts.
He played for the Seattle Sea Dragons of the XFL in 2023. He then played for the UFL’s St. Louis Battlehawks in 2024 and 2025.
“Chris was a beloved teammate and leader in the locker room, who demonstrated the importance of hard work, determination, and resilience throughout his career,” the UFL said in a statement. “As importantly, Chris was always a bright soul who everyone throughout the league enjoyed spending time with off-the-field during his three-year tenure.”
Payton-Jones had retired from football in January.
We extend our condolences to his family, friends, teammates, and coaches.
The Buccaneers have agreed to terms with a pair of cornerbacks on one-year deals.
Kemon Hall is signing with the Buccaneers, Adam Schefter of ESPN reports, and Chase Lucas is also joining the team, Mike Garafolo of NFL Media reports.
Hall, 28, spent last season with the Titans.
After being reinstated from an NFL suspension, Hall went back and forth between the active roster and the practice squad. He played 66 defensive snaps and 70 on special teams in four games and totaled nine tackles and a forced fumble.
Hall entered the NFL as an undrafted free agent with the Chargers in 2019. He has also spent time with the Vikings, Saints, Cowboys, Chargers and 49ers.
In 28 games, Hall has recorded 24 tackles, one forced fumble and one recovered fumble.
Lucas, 29, was with the 49ers last season and played 98 defensive snaps and 204 on special teams in 15 games.
The Lions made him a seventh-round pick in 2022, and he has 15 tackles and a pass defensed in 33 career games.
The Lions brought a free agent veteran defensive lineman in for a visit on Tuesday.
The league’s daily transaction report shows that the team reported a meeting with defensive tackle Jay Tufele.
Tufele played in 12 games and made two starts for the Jets during the 2025 season. He had 12 tackles in those appearances.
Prior to joining the Jets, Tufele spent three seasons with the Bengals. He had 42 tackles in 30 games with Cincinnati and began his career by playing in four games for the Jaguars in 2021.
The Lions have added D.J. Wonnum and Payton Turner to their defensive line so far this offseason.
Defensive back Avonte Maddox will be back with the Lions in 2026.
The Lions announced that they re-signed Maddox on Monday afternoon. They did not announce any terms of the deal.
Maddox signed a one-year deal with the Lions last March and appeared in 14 games during his first season with the team. He made three starts and ended the year with 32 tackles, an interception and a forced fumble.
Maddox entered the league as a 2018 fourth-round pick and spent his first seven seasons with the Eagles. He had 270 tackles, three sacks, four interceptions, eight forced fumbles and a fumble recovery during his time in Philly.
Longtime Lions left tackle Taylor Decker asked for and received his release this offseason after the team wanted him to take a pay cut. But while Decker is done as a Lion, he wouldn’t want to be a rival of the Lions.
That’s the word from Justin Rogers, who interviewed Decker and wrote about him for DetroitFootball.net and learned that Decker wouldn’t want to play for the Bears or Packers.
“He wants to play for a winner. Yet he’s kind of thinking about, ‘Is it cheap to go win somewhere else after you’ve invested all your energy emotionally and physically into one franchise?’” Rogers said on the Lions Collective podcast. “I will tell you that he’s pretty anti-playing for the Bears or Packers. That’s the Lions background in him. I know Ben Johnson did it and that was the right situation for him, but Taylor feels kind of dirty about the idea. It just isn’t interesting to him. I could see him joining a team mid-season, the further he gets away from football and games being played, injuries happening and the right offer occurs. I could also see him not playing.”
Decker didn’t appreciate how the Lions approached him this offseason, asking him to take less money after he had been loyal to the team and spent a decade playing for them. But he still very much considers himself a Lion.
“Taylor Decker wants to be remembered as a Lion, to the point where he wants back in the fold,” Rogers said. “Wherever this season may go, whether he plays for someone else or doesn’t, he wants to come here, sign the one-day contract, retire a Lion.”
Decker will be warmly received by Lions fans whenever he does return to Detroit, and not wanting to play for a rival is one of the things Lions fans love about him.
Lions cornerback Terrion Arnold’s name has surfaced in a robbery and kidnapping investigation. Arnold’s lawyer says Arnold was not involved. The Lions believe that.
Lions head coach Dan Campbell and President Rod Wood both said this week that they expect to have Arnold on the field this season and that they accept his claim that he wasn’t involved in the case, which started with Arnold reporting that he’d had property stolen.
“We got all the information that says he wasn’t involved. That’s what we know, that’s all we know, and that’s really all I can say,” Campbell said. “As far as I know it’s not a big deal. It seems like he still wasn’t involved with this.”
Wood told the Detroit Free Press that Arnold “was in my office the day after the allegations came out” and was “grilled” about what happened.
Arnold was the Lions’ first-round draft pick in 2024. He has played 24 games with 22 starts in his first two NFL seasons.
Offseason programs will start getting underway around the NFL next week.
The ten teams that hired new coaches this offseason will be eligible to start working with their players on Monday, April 6. The Ravens are the only team that has set that as their first day of work while the Cardinals, Falcons, Bills, Browns, Raiders, Dolphins, Giants, Steelers and Titans have set Tuesday as their opening day.
All of those teams will also be able to hold a voluntary minicamp later in the spring. Every team is also scheduled to hold a rookie minicamp and a mandatory minicamp over the course of the next few months.
The first two weeks of work for all teams is limited to meetings, strength and conditioning, and physical rehabilitation only. The three-week second phase allows for on-field work, but no full-speed team drills while the third OTA phase allows for team drills, but there is no live contact allowed at any point in the offseason.
Most of the 22 teams with returning coaches will be opening their offseason programs on April 20 or 21. The Broncos have set May 4 as their first day.
Lions running back Jahmyr Gibbs is the betting favorite to be the NFL’s Offensive Player of the Year, and from Lions coach Dan Campbell’s comments, that sounds like a safe bet.
Gibbs is already one of the NFL’s top running backs, but Campbell said the Lions have even bigger plans for what Gibbs can do in their offense, including lining up at wide receiver.
“Gibbs, we didn’t view Gibbs as a runner, he was a weapon,” Campbell said. “We felt like Gibbs, this guy is gonna explode. Yes, he’s a runner, he can run all schemes, he can run inside, outside, the perimeters, but he also can be lethal out of the backfield, and we’re not even there yet. We feel like this guy can play some receiver. He’s dynamic and he’s a difference-maker. They don’t come around often.”
When the Lions took Gibbs with the 12th overall pick in the 2023 NFL draft, some thought he was a reach. Campbell did not.
“We’d have taken him earlier. We would have taken him earlier,” Campbell said.
The Lions took a step backward in 2025, and head coach Dan Campbell thinks getting into Super Bowl contention in 2026 might be more about attitude than talent.
Campbell said the Lions will bring in more young players this season, and he wants those players to be the kinds of guys who spice things up with their effort. He said the kinds of players he envisions adding to the team will have the same character as the players they added when he was building up the roster early in his tenure in Detroit.
“Everybody wants talent, I’ll always want talent, but it’s always nice to have a little bit of saltiness to you over the talent that lacks saltiness because that’s what we were in ’22, and a part of ’23,” Campbell said. “We had talent, but we had some salty guys and we were highly competitive. We were willing to make it work, figure it out, so just getting a little bit of that edge back. Some of that comes with youth. Now, with youth, you’re gonna have some of the stuff that gets frustrating, the mental [mistakes], but we believe we can get them there as a staff and with the rest of the players we have around them.”
The Lions went 9-8 last year, which before Campbell arrived was considered a good season in Detroit. Campbell has raised the standard to where 9-8 was a disappointment. He wants his team to be better in 2026, and he thinks the team can get better with players who are saltier.
