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Erasing Ebron: Let’s re-draft the Detroit Lions 2014 NFL Draft picks

By Michael Kirkland

NEW YORK, NY - MAY 08: Eric Ebron of the North Carolina Tar Heels poses with former Detroit Lion Barry Sanders (L) and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell (R) after he was picked #10 overall by the Detroit Lions during the first round of the 2014 NFL Draft at Radio City Music Hall on May 8, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)
NEW YORK, NY - MAY 08: Eric Ebron of the North Carolina Tar Heels poses with former Detroit Lion Barry Sanders (L) and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell (R) after he was picked #10 overall by the Detroit Lions during the first round of the 2014 NFL Draft at Radio City Music Hall on May 8, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images) /
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Eric Ebron, Detroit Lions
Eric Ebron, Detroit Lions (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images) /

The 2014 NFL draft stirs up a lot of negative emotions for Detroit Lions fans. Let’s re-draft it.

A lot of Detroit Lions‘ social media chatter lately has been about our old friend, Eric Ebron, the former first-round tight end who never lived up to his draft status and eventually played his way out of town.

After looking at the class that he headlined, though, we have to say that the 2014 draft haul was one of the worst in recent Lions history. So, we decided to re-draft the class without moving any spots to see how that class might have been without “Droptimus Prime.”

Obviously, the top pick makes this class look bad but the quality of any draft class is often defined by what you found in the later rounds when general managers really make their money and demonstrate their chops as evaluators and at finding value in the draft.

The 2014 NFL class is playing its seventh year in the league and contained a lot of great players that the Detroit Lions had a choice of at their number ten spot in the draft. They drafted tenth due to the 7-9 record from 2013 and while the 2014 campaign was very successful, 11-5, the draft class had a very limited impact on the outcome. You can view the draft here from Pro Football Reference.

The draft class for the Detroit Lions included (in draft order) Ebron, Kyle Van Noy, Travis Swanson, Nevin Lawson, Larry Webster, Caraun Reid, T.J. Jones, and Nate Freese. That was the “amazing” class of players brought home by the former general manager, Martin Mayhew. Mayhew earned his freedom from the Lions after a 2015 season where his next draft was perhaps even worse.

A specific move was made to trade up for Van Noy but in this re-draft, we’ll just keep the trade-up even though it wouldn’t prevent us from getting the guy we like better. It’s just to show what kinds of players we could still have from this class, as all of them are gone. We got rid of the last one a year ago.

Here we go! We’ll go in reverse order to make it a bit more climactic!

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