When the Detroit Lions bundled three draft picks in a trade package and sent them to the Minnesota Vikings on Thursday night, it wasn’t some spontaneous action. Lions GM Brad Holmes and his Minnesota counterpart, Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, had agreed to the basic framework of the trade well before the first round of the 2022 NFL draft.
In a great interview with Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press, Holmes explained that the Lions chose to be aggressive there to land one of the top receivers two weeks before the draft. Everyone in Allen Park — notably head coach Dan Campbell and owner Shiela Ford Hamp — agreed this was the proper course of action, so Holmes got busy on the phones.
Holmes called four teams around No. 12, both before and after the Vikings pick, and all four said they were interested in moving down, with everyone realizing contingencies were attached.
A few days later, Holmes followed up with Adofo-Mensah to finalize the parameters of the deal, and after working the phones the morning of the draft, he called the Vikings’ first-year GM around 3 or 4 p.m. Thursday from the Lions’ Allen Park practice facility.
