I’m back in downtown Indianapolis for the weekend and it’s weird being here outside of the NFL scouting combine. Normally my trips to Indy revolve around the massive NFL event every winter, and being back within walking distance of the massive Indiana Convention Center and impressive Lucas Oil Field refreshes the memory of the visit here a few months ago.
Back in late February, Lions GM Brad Holmes and head coach Dan Campbell did their media sessions in front of a throng of reporters. Because they’re still fairly new on the job, we always wonder just how revealing and truthful they are being with us when they speak.
Okay, we don’t wonder that about Campbell. He doesn’t have a disingenuous bone in his body. But Holmes doesn’t have the frequency or breadth of a track record. So I decided to look back at what Holmes said at his podium, the spot where now a horde of 11-to-15-year-old girls prepare to play a volleyball tournament.
“You still want to build through the draft. At least that’s what Dan (Campbell) and I talk about, in terms of building through the draft,” Holmes said to us at the scouting combine. “You want to be selective and you want to be strategic in free agency. We did a lot of the one-year deals last year that kind of went in line with what our plan was and our process was at that time. And now we’re entering Year 2 of our plan. You’ve got a tweak here and there that’s gonna be a little bit different. But as the years go on, you’ve just got to stick to your plan.”
So far, so good on the credibility meter. Remember, this was before the free agent signing period. Holmes and the Lions did just what he said–he stuck to the plan he laid out bare for us.
Much of the Lions action in free agency still tended toward one-year deals. That’s what landed LB Chris Board, WR DJ Chark, S DeShon Elliott, CB Mike Hughes, TE Garrett Griffin and quite a few players returning to Detroit, too. Safety Tracy Walker is the only player of consequence who signed for more than one year, a smart exception made for a 27-year-old building block at a position where the Lions were sorely lacking.
He also proved a man of his word on the speed front, specifically with wide receiver Jameson Williams. The Lions traded up to No. 12 overall to land the Alabama wideout, who could not run at the combine because of a recent ACL injury.
“You know me, I’m always gonna see how fast a guy looks on tape. Whether it’s the GPS speed, it’s the handheld speed, it’s the electronic speed, you utilize all of them. But at the end of the day, and I always challenge my staff, ‘Tell me how fast that guy is on film.’ We don’t need to wait to see what he runs on a clock. If the guy is fast, he’s fast. And if the clock doesn’t confirm that, then there’s some more work that we’ve got to do,” Holmes said.
Nobody was faster than Williams in all of college football last year based on GPS-based timing. Holmes didn’t need to see a 4.24 on a stopwatch to know Williams can fly with his game-impacting speed.
A lot of the other questions Holmes fielded at the combine dealt with specific situations. Four questions in a row brought up Trey Flowers, who was released not long afterward. Holmes was transparently noncommittal in his answers. He deftly deferred on answering questions about Aaron Rodgers (the shadow of the Packers is inescapable) and franchise tags, too.
Both Holmes and Campbell like to use the term “cut from the same cloth” when describing their vision for their team. Part of that cloth is honesty. No lies detected in what either man told us at the combine.
