'Feed the beast:' Why Oregon OL Jackson Powers-Johnson makes sense for Lions in NFL draft

There are plenty of reasons the Detroit Lions have blossomed from one of the worst teams in the NFL to legitimate Super Bowl contenders in three years.

Brad Holmes and his staff have done an excellent job acquiring talent. Dan Campbell and his assistants have been equally good at developing players and leading the locker room. The roster is young and deep. And at the core of it is a very good offensive line.

Holmes and Campbell inherited the makings of a good front when they came to Detroit in 2021, and in one of their masterstrokes, quickly made it better. Taylor Decker, Frank Ragnow, Jonah Jackson and Halapoulivaati Vaitai were staples of the unit then, and Holmes and Campbell spent their first-ever draft pick on Penei Sewell.

The addition of Sewell was less luxury – the Lions had much more glaring needs at the time – than Holmes’ attempt to follow the roster-building approach he learned during his days as college scouting director with the Los Angeles Rams by taking the best player available with no regard to need or position.

Holmes was a young scout when his bosses started pouring resources into the defensive line. Billy Devaney took defensive end Robert Quinn with his first-round pick in 2011, No. 14 overall. Les Snead followed a year later by making defensive tackle Michael Brockers his first draft choice. And in 2014, the Rams spent another first-round pick on the defensive line and star tackle Aaron Donald.

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“That was the beast,” Holmes told me the morning of his first draft as Lions GM. “And (talking with Campbell) it was like, ‘OK, well, what’s going to be our beast?’ Is it going to be adding a wide receiver for the speed that we already have? Adding more vertical speed? Do the guys got to start backing off making it better for Jared and everybody else? Or do you add a piece on the offensive line and how much does that help? Or do you add a corner and how much does that improve the secondary?”

Coming out of that year’s draft, Holmes said that morning, “it’d be real nice to have” a beast for the Lions to call their own.

By the end of the night, with Sewell in the fold, Holmes had exactly what he wanted.

Three years later, the beast the Lions have put so much care into needs to be fed again.

Sewell might be the best offensive tackle on the planet, and Decker and Ragnow still are playing at a high level, but Decker is entering the last year of his contract, Ragnow’s injury concerns aren’t going away and Jackson, Vaitai and Vaitai’s replacement, Graham Glasgow, all will be unrestricted free agents next week.

The Lions seem likely to bring back one of their free agent guards; I’d guess Glasgow, with Vaitai heading off to retirement and Jackson landing a big-money deal somewhere else.

But no matter what they do in free agency, they need to ensure the beast stays strong for years to come.

For those reasons, I gave Oregon center Jackson Powers-Johnson to the Lions with the No. 29 pick in my latest mock draft.

As I wrote in the mock, I don’t know that Powers-Johnson will make it to 29. I had him going nine spots earlier in my first mock. But in a draft deep in linemen and receivers, it makes sense the Lions would take a player who has the ability to play all three interior line positions and should fortify the group at a manageable rate for years to come.

Powers-Johnson cemented his status as the top center prospect in the draft with a strong showing at the Senior Bowl college all-star game. He’s bigger than most centers at 6 feet 3 and 328 pounds, and he has the nasty streak the Lions like in their lineman.

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Asked to describe his playing style at the NFL combine last week, Powers-Johnson said he was “physical, enthusiastic and a little nasty, too.”

“I’m a bigger center and I think I move pretty good, too,” he told reporters. “So just being a physical, nasty center and just having fun playing football. I think you can see that on film, see it every play.”

Powers-Johnson said at the combine he “love(s)” playing center, but with the Lions, he likely would start his career at guard.

In college, Powers-Johnson played mostly as a backup for two seasons on the interior line – and made a spot appearance at defensive tackle in Oregon’s 2021 bowl game – before taking over at center last year. He won the Rimington Award as college football’s best center last season and could spend the next few years learning from Ragnow, one of the best pivots in the NFL, as the Lions keep their options open on their future.

Remember, when the Lions drafted Sewell, most thought he was a placeholder at right tackle until the Lions traded or moved on from Decker. Now, as good as he could be at left tackle, it’s hard to imagine him moving from the right side.

Powers-Johnson, of course, played in the same college program as Sewell, and at the combine, he said he’d be happy to follow in his footsteps to Detroit.

“It’s a huge (advantage) just knowing that you’re going to an organization that has a great offensive line and a great team,” Powers-Johnson said. “It’s humbling to see and it’s humbling to even think I could be a part of something like that, especially having a guy like No. 58, Penei Sewell, a guy coming from Oregon. It’s cool to see and really honored to even be in the conversation.”

Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: It's time for Detroit Lions to address OL again in NFL draft