DETROIT — First, the usual disclaimer.
Grading the NFL draft is an absurd thing to do. Even the best of prospects have a 50% bust rate, and only a small fraction of the ones who hit are good enough to change the fortunes of their franchise.
Kenny Golladay? No one knew three years ago he was going to be a star, even the man who drafted him, Detroit Lions general manager Bob Quinn.
But as good as Golladay is, he hasn’t been to the playoffs in any of his three seasons and he has played in just a handful of meaningful games in his career.
This isn’t to criticize Golladay in any way. He deserves every penny of the mega contract extension he’s in line for this summer.
It’s to remind everyone that the draft is a collective exercise, and its real value won’t be known for years. One star, even a bonus one like Golladay, does not outweigh a bust (Teez Tabor) when it comes to the impact of an entire class, and difference-makers and depth are hard to find. Jarrad Davis, the Lions’ first-round pick in that Golladay-Tabor draft, is an average linebacker who hasn’t made enough of an impact for the team to pick up the fifth-year option on his rookie contract yet. And four of the six players the Lions took after Golladay already are on other teams or out of the league, and the two who remain face uncertain futures in Detroit.
I like most of what Quinn did in this year’s draft. I like it enough to think he’s positioned the Lions for a rebound of some sort this fall.
He made measured picks early in the draft. He grabbed the best players in the class at two separate positions of need with his first two selections. He got good value in his Day 2 trade up, according to the popular Jimmy Johnson trade chart. And he filled a couple needs with depth plays late.
Looking at what the Lions have done the last three days, they’re in position to extract more value out of their draft class than any team in the NFC North, though to be fair, that’s how the draft is set up to work with bad teams getting first crack at the best players.
I wouldn’t categorize this draft as a grand slam for the Lions. Maybe if Chase Young fell in their lap at three or they were able to trade down from that spot and pick up a host of other valuable assets while still getting Jeff Okudah.
But reasonably, there’s not much to quibble with when it comes to what Quinn did.
Okudah in Round 1 has the ceiling of an All-Pro cornerback. His ex-coaches at Ohio State gush about his work ethic and skill set and desire to be great, and he’s clearly a fit for what the Lions want on and off the field.
“If you had to draw up a corner, he’s what they look like. And most guys who look like that don’t move like him,” Boston College coach Jeff Hafley, Okudah’s defensive coordinator last season at Ohio State and a former NFL secondary coach with the San Francisco 49ers, Cleveland Browns and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, told me Friday. “Take away all that, you’re getting a kid who wants to be the best. And I’ve been around a lot of good ones, and the difference between those guys and just the ordinary guys are their mindset. And Jeff’s got that mindset.”
Hafley coached both Darrelle Revis and Richard Sherman at points of their careers, and he said Okudah’s approach to the game is on par with those future Hall of Famers.
Okudah is the type of blue-chip defensive talent the Lions have largely lacked in recent years. But as good a prospect as he is, it’s unreasonable to expect him to be an immediate star.
That’s the case with most rookies, not just in the Lions’ class but around the league — and especially this year given what’s going on around the world.
In Round 2, the Lions took the draft’s best running back in D’Andre Swift. He was good enough as a freshman to crack a backfield rotation at Georgia that included future NFL starters Nick Chubb and Sony Michel, and he only got better the last two years. The Lions have had a perpetually mediocre, at best, running game in recent years, and Swift is the type of talent who might finally be able to fix that, even if he splits time with Kerryon Johnson as a rookie.
I got mixed feedback from my NFL sources on the Lions’ two third-round picks, Julian Okwara and Jonah Jackson. Okwara is a talented pass rusher who has work to do as a run defender and is coming off a broken leg. Jackson, a graduate transfer from Rutgers who spent last season at Ohio State, can play either guard spot and should vie for a starting job in Detroit as a rookie, but one scout told me it was easy to spot “the Rutgers guy” on the Buckeyes’ All-American offensive line.
Both Okwara and Jackson have warts as players, which is why they were available in the third round. But for a Lions team that entered the week with myriad holes to fill, they, along with fourth-round pick Logan Stenberg, could be contributors in Year 1.
I think the Lions needed to do more to help their defensive line than spend a couple late-round picks on tackles, and I don’t love taking a receiver with 4.7 speed and a sexual assault acquittal in his background. But overall, the class has promise.
Looking around the rest of the NFC North, the Chicago Bears don’t appear to have significantly bettered themselves in the draft with no picks in the first or third rounds, and coming off an 8-8 season, their hopes for a return to dominance ride on new quarterback Nick Foles’ shoulders. The Minnesota Vikings had a nice draft, landing four potential contributors on the first two days. But they also lost starters Stefon Diggs, Linval Joseph, Xavier Rhodes and Everson Griffen this spring. As for the Green Bay Packers, well, they took the long approach to the draft, adding a player in quarterback Jordan Love who may one day run the franchise, but who adds little immediate value — and may actually cause more strife — in 2020.
I feel confident in saying the Lions will be a better team this fall than they were last season, and I believe their draft class — along with a healthy Matthew Stafford — will be a big part of the reason why.
But what the Lions really need is to look back on this weekend three years from now and see this draft as something that transformed their future in a positive way (and maybe not have Green Bay do the same).
They need Okudah to be one of the best cornerbacks in football. They need Swift or Okwara to provide a Golladay-like return on investment. They need at least one of the guards they took to be a fixture on their offensive line. And they need to keep some of their Day 3 picks on their roster for more than one or two years.
Maybe that’s asking too much, though teams have had that kind of draft success — the 2017 New Orleans Saints and 2016 Dallas Cowboys come to mind — in the not-too-distant past.
Some of those teams, like the Saints, earned high marks in the moment. Others, like Cowboys, who gambled on injury risk Jaylon Smith in the second round, were viewed more skeptically at the time.
None of the instant feedback mattered then, and none of it matters now.
The new-car smell of this year’s draft will be gone soon enough, and we’ll be left to judge Quinn’s picks by the only measure that matters — what they do on the field.
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