3 worst moves the Detroit Lions have made this offseason

3. Seeming to settle for keeping Michael Badgley as the kicker

Once again, Badgley deserves a ton of credit for coming in last season and ending the Lions’ kicker turnstile post-Matt Prater. In 12 games last season kicking for Detroit, he went 20-for-24 on field goals and a perfect 33-for-33 on extra points.

But Badgley is eminently replaceable. Despite his being re-signed right away in March there were (and still are) options in free agency, and the idea of the Lions taking a kicker from a pretty good draft class at the position was an easy one until it didn’t happen. John Parker Romo was an All-XFL team kicker this spring, but with very little NFL experience it’s hard to bank on him sticking around, let alone beating Badgley out for the job.

Yes, this is a lot attention to pay to the kicker spot. But it’s easy to render it as unimportant until it impacts a team’s strategy in negative way, or a critical game is lost due to a missed kick that would have been made by the majority of NFL kickers.

This is a move (or lack of a move) that could still be rectified by the Lions, with Brandon McManus now added to the list of available free agent kickers. But they may not be all that interested in upgrading on Badgley, otherwise they might have (would have?) done it already.