Detroit Lions: Building a dominant defensive line for 2019

Giants castoff defensive end Romeo Okwara also blossomed in his first year with the Lions alongside Harrison, finishing with a career best 7.5 sacks and receiving a new two-year contract this month.

Okwara’s production notwithstanding, when NFL free agency opens in the coming week the Lions are sure to be in the market for another edge rusher or a defensive end. This will likely be as the replacement for Ansah, a pending unrestricted free agent.

This offseason’s flurry of franchise tag designations, principally given to edge defenders, highlights the critical importance of that position in today’s NFL. Regardless of your team’s deficiencies in other areas, if you can get to the quarterback, you give yourself a chance to win games.

To that end, landing someone like Patriots’ edge defender Trey Flowers in free agency would make the Lions’ front even more daunting and could provide the piece needed to vault them into league supremacy in the defensive trenches. Flowers is a more than capable pass rusher and excels as a run defender, also a critical element for an edge player in a successful 3-4 defense.

Should the Lions miss out on Flowers, there will be plenty of options in the upcoming draft, one lauded for its abundance of talented edge defenders and defensive lineman. One more piece could push the Lions’ defensive line to one of the most versatile and dangerous in the league. Could anybody have foreseen this possibility a year ago?

Do you think that the Detroit Lions could field one of the best defensive lines in the NFL in 2019? Let us know in the comments section below.