There were plenty of problems that popped up during the Detroit Lions’ 41-31 loss to the Buffalo Bills on Thursday night. A leaky offensive line, a short-handed secondary and an offense that got going way too late were part of the Lions problems. But they also struggled because of a lack of production from Brad Holmes’s recent draft classes.
Holmes built the Lions’ core with strong classes from 2021 through 2023 but his past three draft classes haven’t produced much impact, including a group of rookies that appear to be spinning their wheels in the first two games of the season.
While there’s a lot that Lions fans can point to after Thursday’s loss, the Lions’ lack of young talent is a big one and it’s something where someone has to step up if Detroit wants to keep its championship window open this season and beyond.
Brad Holmes’s draft success is starting to dry up
The first three years of Holmes’s tenure as Lions general manager were built through the draft. The first pick of his tenure along with head coach Dan Campbell was Penei Sewell, who was taken with the seventh overall pick in the 2021 draft. The rest of that draft class also produced several key pieces including Alim McNeil, Derrick Barnes and Amon-Ra St. Brown.
The Lions had an even better draft class in 2022 beginning with Aidan Hutchinson, who was selected with the second overall pick. After fleecing the Minnesota Vikings in a trade up for Jameson Williams, Holmes kept going, adding Kerby Joseph in the third round and Malcolm Rodriguez in the sixth round.
A successful heat check followed in 2023 when the Lions took Jahmyr Gibbs and Jack Campbell in the first round and added Sam LaPorta and Brian Branch in the second round. But the clock has struck midnight since as the Lions’ young players haven’t panned out.
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2024 first-round pick Terrion Arnold’s tenure in Detroit ended when Terrion Arnold was charged with eight felonies after an alleged kidnapping incident. But he wasn’t living up to expectations before his legal issues, allowing a 96.9 passer rating when targeted over his first two seasons per Pro Football Focus.
The rest of the 2024 class followed a similar pattern with Ennis Rakestraw, Giovanni Manu and Mekhi Wingo and other misses defining the group. While the 2025 draft class has produced a pair of starters in Tyleik Williams and Tate Ratledge, the rest of the class hasn’t done much either and with 2026 first-rounder Blake Miller sidelined with a knee injury on Thursday night, the rest of the class didn’t do much to help against the Bills with second-round pick Derrick Moore logging a 49.4 overall grade, no tackles and one pressure on 17 defensive snaps.
The Lions lack of draft success is a short- and long-term problem
The lack of young talent wasn’t the biggest reason why the Lions lost to the Bills, but it still played a massive role. Without a safety to step up in the absence of Joseph and Branch, Josh Allen torched the Lions for 248 yards and three touchdowns through the air. Without a tackle to fill in for Miller, the Lions had to rely on Larry Borom, who was smoked for seven quarterback pressures and a pair of sacks allowed on 44 pass-rushing snaps.
You can point to a number of areas where having cheap, efficient depth could have helped the Lions on Thursday night. But instead, Buffalo looked a class above the Lions all night long before Detroit made the score look a little better with a pair of touchdowns in the fourth quarter.
But while the rest of the season could get murky if someone doesn’t step up, so could the Lions future. Not picking at the top of the draft has played a role in the Lions’ recent draft classes, but it also could foce Detroit to go diving for castoffs in free agency to fill those holes as some of the key players from the first three classes either age out or become too expensive to keep.
Detroit has plenty of issues to sort out before they host the New York Jets in Week 3. But if they don’t get anything from their recent draft classes soon, they’ll have a thin margin of error which was exposed against the Bills and could be exposed as they go into the future.
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