'Bartering' Brad Holmes reminds me of the best team builder in Detroit sports history
Watching Brad Holmes maneuver his way through another NFL draft got me thinking about the architect of the Bad Boys era Pistons, a man Detroit sports fan of a certain vintage might remember as “Trader” Jack McCloskey.
McCloskey built the Pistons into two-time world champions, deftly constructing a roster through trades and the draft to compete and ultimately dethrone Larry Bird’s Boston Celtics and Magic Johnson’s Los Angeles Lakers.
The Pistons surrounded their homegrown nucleus of Isiah Thomas, Joe Dumars, John Salley and Dennis Rodman with players they acquired in trades like Vinnie Johnson and Bill Laimbeer, and eventually Adrian Dantley and Mark Aguirre.
It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, building rosters in the NBA and NFL, but more than the shrewdness of McCloskey’s moves, the thing I remember most about my favorite GM as a kid — yep, I had one — was the aggressive approach he took to acquiring talent.
“Bartering” Brad Holmes hasn’t hit on 100% of his moves — no one does. The jury remains out, for example, on his trade up in the 2022 draft for Jameson Williams.
But he has paired his very discernible eye for college talent with an attacking mentality that blooms every April among the draft’s flowers, and that’s intoxicating to see.
This year, Holmes made four trades, all moves up the board, for players he and Lions coach Dan Campbell apparently fell in love with during the draft process. They traded up in the first round for cornerback Terrion Arnold, tried to trade up in the second round for cornerback Ennis Rakestraw Jr., made two moves for future draft picks in Round 4 to take Giovanni Manu and Sione Vaki, and closed the draft by dealing up for defensive lineman Mekhi Wingo in Round 6.
The Lions have built their roster to the point they can afford to make two-for-one type deals like they did when they slid a third-rounder to the Dallas Cowboys to go up five spots and draft Arnold. In Year 1 of their rebuild, missing out on an eventual starter in Round 3, someone like Kerby Joseph or Ifeatu Melifonwu, would have been tougher to stomach.
But the realities of a draft in which 257 players get selected and teams have about half as many draftable grades is that even then evaluators only have a couple dozen (maybe?) crushes every year.
Holmes fell hard for all of his trade-up guys, and he puts more of a premium on his ability to identify talent and do whatever is within reason to acquire it than the power-in-numbers approach.
Both Arnold and Rakestraw are top-end, starting-caliber talents whose profiles screamed Lions even before the draft. They excelled in the SEC — the best conference in college football — have skills that translate to success in the NFL in general and the Lions defense in particular, and should contribute this fall at a position of need on a team that expects to contend for the Super Bowl.
Holmes took more of a risk on Day 3, dealing future third- and fourth-round picks for Manu and Vaki, respectively.
The Lions don’t have a third-round choice in 2025 and are down to one fourth-rounder — they gave the Philadelphia Eagles back the pick they acquired in the D’Andre Swift trade last year — and while that may not seem like much, it’s not nothing, either. Without a third-round pick this year, the Lions might not have had the muscle to move up and draft Arnold like they did.
(Rakestraw, presumably, would have been an option at No. 29 since he was the No. 2 cornerback on the Lions’ board; the Dallas Cowboys took offensive tackle Tyler Guyton with that pick.)
Now, to be clear, I’d rather have good players than extra draft picks or abundant cap space, so I appreciate Holmes’ "Scared Money Don’t Make Money" approach. But the cost of doing business if you miss on the evaluation isn’t cheap.
Ultimately, this year’s draft will be judged on what Arnold and Rakestraw mean to the secondary in the coming seasons, and if a third starter emerges from the class.
And like McCloskey years ago, Holmes is betting on himself.
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∎ Arnold was my favorite Lions pick in this draft, and while the balance of the trade may have tilted in the Cowboys’ favor according to the old trade value chart, it was a fair price to pay for a player almost everyone ranked among the top two cornerbacks in the draft.
For the record, the Cowboys took Kansas State guard Cooper Beebe with the third-round pick they acquired in their trade down.
Rakestraw was the best value the Lions got in any of their picks. When I put my three draft-day scenarios together last week, I proposed the Lions drafting Arnold in a trade up and Rakestraw in a trade back, suspecting his injury history and play style might knock him out of Round 1. He’s a perfect fit for the Lions, though, and I wouldn’t have guessed he’d make it to 61.
As for the biggest risk of the draft, that’s clearly Manu, given the price the Lions paid to move up for a developmental tackle who has tons of physical ability but played against low-level talent in Canada and remains raw. The Lions have a good developmental staff, but even Holmes acknowledged they’re not expecting any sort of immediate returns.
∎ It was interesting to hear Holmes share his vision for Wingo, the defensive lineman out of LSU the Lions took with the 189th pick of the draft.
He played mostly inside at LSU, where he was respected enough to wear the program’s No. 18 jersey, but Holmes said he could play as a big defensive end on base downs, similar to Josh Paschal.
Holmes admitted he was “not sure” about Wingo as an interior defensive line prospect, but that Wingo moved up his draft board when he saw the lineman in a different positional light.
“When I kept watching him, his rush ability really started to come to light,” Holmes said. “I kind of put him in a different box, a little bit like when we talked about Paschal when Paschal came out. It’s like, ‘OK, can he play on the edge on first and second down, and can he do some inside rush?’
“Wingo, he’s got a lot of good stuff on tape as an edge rusher actually, surprisingly. His sub-rush is pretty impressive. Not saying that he can’t play base downs inside because he can do that as well, but when you put him in that specialized category, or that position — whether it’s more of a big end or more of an elephant that can do some interchangeable things, that’s kind of where he's standing. When we saw him in that light, that’s kind of when he became more attractive to us.”
∎ The NFC North is going to be one banger of a division if any or all of the young quarterbacks hit in the coming years. The Packers seem to be in good shape the way Jordan Love finished the season. The Chicago Bears have a nice roster around talented No. 1 overall pick Caleb Williams. And new Minnesota Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy is stepping into the best situation of any rookie given the receivers he has to throw to.
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The Lions are still the division — and maybe the conference — favorites in 2024, but even knowing the bust rates of young quarterbacks, they’re going to have to work to stay there.
∎ It was awesome to see so many fans turn out for the draft, even if it was a bear to maneuver through the crowd when I was there Day 1. Detroit is a great sports city, and you fans certainly show out for big events.
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on X and Instagram at @davebirkett.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Lions' Brad Holmes right to bet on himself with NFL draft day moves
