‘Only going to get better’
GM Holmes is tired of hearing Lions were a cute story; and he’s got receipts Watching Holmes playing offense is fun, but Lions GM must focus on defense
Brad Holmes brought receipts.
For everyone one who questioned him, doubted him, wondered why he took a running back in the first round and a tight end early in the second.
He brought an edge, some fire, and everything anyone has ever used to make one. He spent 40 minutes Monday afternoon during his end-of-season Detroit Lions news conference saying he didn’t want to say “Itold-you-so” but did exactly that.
“We’re always picking football players,” he said, “it’s just that when we pick football players high, you all bashed us.”
He sounded like Michael Jordan conjuring up his high school coach, Tiger Woods draining a 30-footer to show his dad, Dan Campbell talking about kneecaps.
You thought Ifeatu Melifonwu was a reach? What do you have to say now? How about Jahmyr Gibbs? Or Sam LaPorta? Or Jack Campbell ... wait, can we get back to you on that one?
He remembers every ... single ... criticism. If fuels him. Motivates him. Stirs his soul. Turns out he’s no different than a coach or a player in this way, and it explains a lot about the man leading the Lions rebuild. And a lot about the rebuild.
Or “retool,” as he once said. (He remembered he got
Brad Holmes’ drafting vision all makes sense now. After all, the Detroit Lions general manager opened his season-ending news conference Monday going so hard on offense there wasn’t room for any defense.
You can call it the James Harden approach. Or maybe Shaq is more appropriate, since he dunked on so many people.
Holmes delivered the most raw, real and passionate news conference of his tenure while calling out a few reporters (yes, including your favorite Free Press sports columnist) over differences in opinion on players. The Lions should have skipped the press passes for this one and handed out Kevlar vests instead.
And I loved every minute of it.
For the record, Holmes kept it 100% professional. He didn’t take any cheap shots and I’m not offended. In fact, I’d give him a standing ovation for his approach. Even if I don’t agree entirely with all of his points, I’ll take a passionate delivery every time over a prosaic presser with pat answers.
As enjoyable as it was watching Holmes repeatedly jump off the top rope and hit reporters over the head with folding chairs, there was a necessary sobering subject that needed to bring up amid Holmes’ offensive barrage: the defense.
blasted using that word, too.)
Hey, it takes a special sort of folk to shrug off criticism when their work unfolds in public. Many swear they ignore the critics and secondguessers. That the negativity rolls off their back. Most can’t. Except for sociopaths, and Holmes is obviously not that.
No, he’s human, never more so than when he met with reporters in Allen Park on Monday to wrap up the season. He hears everything. Reads everything as well, apparently. Hey, wherever you find the fuel, right?
Not only did he bring receipts, which was easy to do after a 12-5 regular season, a division title, a couple of playoff wins and an NFC title game, he brought another message, too: (Expletive) every one of you (expletive). Oh, he didn’t use those exact words. He didn’t need to. His tone said enough.
He didn’t say he was tired of the offseason critics, the draft critics, the free-agency doubters, but he clearly enjoyed reminding folks what he has done. He just wants everyone to know the offseason might look unconventional again. And that it’s by design.
“Don’t get spooked this spring by speculation,” he said. That’s “a lot of opinions.”
Junk food for the “entertainment news feed.”
“I’ll even go back to the past drafts that we’ve had ... every move we make is to win in December.”
Not to win over NFL draft analysts. Or national observers. Or even local media.
It’s all about the plan, and the plan isn’t changing. Intangibles are still the priority. So is grit, however difficult that is to define.
“We have to get past just looking for the most talented player,” Holmes said. “In my opinion, that’s the prerequisite of evaluation ... that’s what’s made us who we are. That’s what I’m saying about that 2021 draft class. That was very intentional to find those guys that had the intangibles. It’s not like, ‘Oh, we’ll wait until the fourth round to pick a wide receiver.’ No, we wanted (Amon-Ra) St. Brown. He had the intangibles that we were looking for to set our foundation.
He can say that now. Heck, he can say anything he wants now. He’s got the record. The wins. The turnaround in three years.
This doesn’t mean he won’t take a swing — or a chance — on a player that’s talented who doesn’t snugly fit into the locker room culture, believing that the culture envelops the player. He did that to a degree with C.J. Gardner-Johnson, the free agent safety who came over last winter from Philadelphia.
Gardner-Johnson certainly had grit. He also had a beef with San Francisco’s Deebo Samuel and let it get the better of him in the NFC title game when he took a silly personal foul penalty. That loss of team-oriented focus didn’t cost the Lions in the moment, but it might have.
Sometimes teams must live with a player who lives on the edge. The question is how many? Based on Holmes’ track record here, and the fact that he didn’t acquire any big names at the trading deadline this last winter, not many.
The culture is too important. Besides, the formula works.
At least it has worked to this point. But now comes the hardest part. It’s one thing to begin a rebuild, to find future stars in the first round, to fashion a roster that is competitive. It’s another to push that final few steps.
The Lions are closer to the Super Bowl than they are to the bottom of the division. That’s progress, historic progress.
But getting to the Super Bowl and winning it?
That’s the hardest step of all. As it always is when going from good — or very good — to great.
Holmes wants your trust that his plan already includes the calculus to make this final leap. He wants you to look beyond the headlines this spring and summer, and to believe that he and Campbell didn’t just think that they would be here at this point but knew they would.
More than anything, he wants you to believe that this past season was just the start. That the Lions weren’t simply a “cute” story, something he said he was tired of hearing.
“It’s only going to get better,” he said. “We’re only going to get better. I don’t want anyone to think that this was a one-shot, Cinderella journey that just happened. No, it’s real. This is exactly what was supposed to happen.”
In other words, go jump in a lake if you haven’t jumped on the bandwagon. Holmes doesn’t have time for your cynical shenanigans. It’s happening in Detroit. He’s got receipts. And storing more in his wallet by the day.