The first 14 picks in Thursday night’s first round were offensive players, which was both the longest run without a defensive player to open an NFL draft in history and a good development for the Lions.
Lions General Manager Brad Holmes said that the team was hoping to add a cornerback in the draft, but that they didn’t plan on former Alabama corner Terrion Arnold slipping to the 29th pick. That calculus changed once all the offensive players started coming off the board and Holmes pulled the trigger on a trade with the Cowboys once Arnold made it to No. 24.
Holmes said there was “a pretty significant line underneath him to the next guy,” so it was hard for him to contain his pleasure about how things played out.
“I don’t want to say speechless, but overly thrilled with how tonight went,” Holmes said, via Justin Rogers of the Detroit News. “All these drafts, you never know how it’s going to go. We knew it was an offensive-heavy draft. That’s what we did know. We didn’t quite know those defenders would get pushed to that point, especially a guy like Terrion, but we couldn’t be more ecstatic or thrilled with how it went.”
Arnold will have some familiar faces meeting him in Detroit as former Alabama players Jahmyr Gibbs, Brian Branch, and Jameson Williams have joined the Lions in recent years. The hope is that they can help the Lions maintain the kind of success they grew accustomed to in college.
