It’s always interesting to learn the process behind how NFL teams evaluate draft prospects and stack them up on a big board. There are several ways to create rankings and selection values.
One NFL general manager recently shed some light on his team’s procedure of creating a big board. Detroit Lions GM Brad Holmes, who has drafted incredibly well in his tenure, offered up some general insight on how he and his scouting staff got everything set for the 2024 NFL draft.
Without getting into specific players or overall position groups, Holmes walked reporters through the process of how the Lions set up their big board this draft season.
“I’ll try to be as generalized as I can. It is vertically by positions,” Holmes explained. “We’re not big rounds – we have it set up in a way where it equates to a round, we just don’t use the word ‘round.’ It’s the same thing with our grading scales – we don’t use ‘rounds’ on our grading scale.”
The concept of not assigning round grades to players might strike some as odd, but that’s fairly routine across the NFL. Holmes went into more detail on why it’s done that way in Detroit and elsewhere.
“Sometimes I might say, ‘We’ve got a second-round grade,’ because that’s kind of what makes sense, but the reason we kind of stay away from the whole ‘rounds’ thing is that when they come on your roster, they’re either a starter, they’re either a backup. They’re not a ‘round’ anymore. It’s not a fourth-round receiver, it’s not a sixth-round safety. He’s either a backup or he’s a high-end backup – that’s what it is. It’s vertically by position from the top to the bottom.”
The distinction of roles rather than round grades or assignments is likely quite variable from team to team and what positions hold different values for each regime. For Holmes and the Lions, it’s about the player’s potential to fill a specific role on the roster.
“It’s really more so – the grade will reflect what the upside and the role is, and then that’s where you kind of get the separation and gaps,” Holmes said. “Really, it’s actually cooler to look at it horizontally than it is to look at it vertically. You do so much work over the whole year that by the time you get to around to March, you have a good feel of how it looks vertically. But sometimes you’ve got to look at it horizontally with different positions, and then that’s when you can truly kind of get a sense of, ‘How good is this draft?'”
Holmes definitely liked the cornerbacks in 2024. Detroit traded up in the first round to select Alabama CB Terrion Arnold, and then selected Missouri CB Ennis Rakestraw with the Lions’ second-round pick.
