How interest in Tua Tagovailoa helps the Detroit Lions draft

Detroit Lions social media is divided about what Tua Tagovailoa’s availability means for the Lions draft, we’ll talk it out this week.

Detroit Lions‘ social media is filling with opinions about what the Lions should do with their first-round draft pick in this coming  April’s 2020 NFL Annual Selection Meeting, aka the NFL draft. A specific hot take either for or against is in regards to Alabama quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, who announced his intention to go pro.

Whether or not you have strong feelings, either way, we should discuss the hype and how his declaration has helped the Lions draft regardless of whether or not he ever wears the Honolulu Blue.

At Kick In The Crotch Weekly, our job is to try to look at issues surrounding the team with some amount of objectivity and to try to give balanced attention to issues with multiple points of view. In an effort to be transparent, we do not think that the Detroit Lions need or will select Tagovailoa but it’s fun to consider the issue.

For fun, we ran an online mock draft with the Detroit Lions taking Tua to see what fell to us in round two. Using Fanspeak’s, On the Clock draft simulator, which can be customized to fit several different scenarios and draft boards are provided from different websites. In the second round, players like K’Lavon Chaisson, Anfernee Jennings, and Julian Okwara were there as edge-linebacker types.

Of course, this is based upon conjecture and one person’s opinion as expressed in their rankings. Also, the final list of what underclassmen will be available is not set yet. Underclassmen have until January twenty-first to declare for the draft.

Tagovailoa injured his ankle and dislocated his hip back on November sixteenth in a matchup versus Mississippi State. He had surgery just after that, has been given a favorable prognosis, and is expected to make a full recovery. Some of the “Tank for Tua” rhetoric has quieted and will probably stay quiet until he is performing like his old self, which is not expected to happen for several months.

The three to four-month recovery time should allow him to resume football activities in the spring, somewhere around March or April, CBS Sports reported. Although his injury has some similarities to former running back Bo Jackson, it is believed that the immediate medical treatment that he received kept the injury from being as destructive as Jackson’s incident. Jackson’s hip was popped back into place on the sideline by the coaching and medical staff in January of 1991, doing extra damage to the circulation in and around his hip joint.

By the current procedure, involved doctors are saying that Tagovailoa will be able to make a 100% recovery.