Brad Holmes is in the midst of his second offseason as general manager of the Detroit Lions but it sure does seem like he (and Dan Campbell) has done a pretty good job of trying to turn around what was an absolute disaster under Bob Quinn and Matt Patricia.
Despite the job Holmes has done, he is not a top 10 general manager in the NFL already, is he?
Well, according to The Athletic’s Nate Tice, Holmes is the No. 10 GM that he would like to build a team with.
In the podcast, Tice and his colleague Robert Mays ranked current NFL GMs, not on how they have done in their career, but based on which ones they would want right now if they were building a team from scratch.
“This is not a power ranking of the jobs that these guys have done recently or in their careers,” Mays explained. “This is, if you were starting a team from scratch right now—every player in the league is a free agent, we’re starting from square one—who would you want to oversee your team.”
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Detroit Lions Brad Holmes named Top 10 GM
Here is what Tice had to say about Brad Holmes being ranked No. 10.
“I can see the path they’re trying to go on, and I think that is really, really cool to see for a guy who’s only entering his second year as a GM,” Tice said. “But I can see the culture they’re trying to build in Detroit, and that’s a reflection, probably, of the head coach they have, but that’s also good insight into their thinking and showing he understands what they are.”
“They have not rushed to anything,” Tice said. “They boosted the offensive line with (Penei) Sewell last year. They didn’t go, ‘Oh, we need to get a wide receiver now.’ They stayed patient with all of these moves. Even though they moved up back into the first round to get Jameson Williams, I thought that was a great understanding, and I thought they really—it depends on the trade chart, yada yada yada—they didn’t give up that much. I thought that was a nice move, and you’re not going to get a Jameson Williams-type in every draft, especially for a team that needed team speed.”
“Position coaches, coordinators, head coaches, they come in and say, ‘I want this guy. I want this guy. I want this guy,’” Tice said. “For a GM to take that, and translate it to something that works, and doesn’t make you bankrupt or dock something in the future or down the road, I like the patience that the Lions have shown.”
Nation, where would you rank Brad Holmes on this list?
