A recap of Detroit Lions GM Brad Holmes’ press conference before the 2025 NFL Draft.
Detroit Lions general manager Brad Holmes held his annual pre-draft press conference on Thursday morning. While these are largely uninformative media sessions, as NFL teams attempt to hide their intentions for next week’s 2025 NFL Draft , Holmes is generally one of the more honest and open general managers in the NFL.
So let’s dive into what he said Thursday morning with our five takeaways from the event.
The ball is in Za’Darius Smith’s court
Down at the owners meeting in Flordia two weeks ago, Holmes noted that they had been in contact with Za’Darius Smith’s agent after the team opted to cut him earlier this offseason in a cost-saving move. Holmes was asked Thursday if there had been any more contact between the two sides since.
“No, we haven’t had any discussions since then,” Holmes said. “I think we kind of left it as that his agent would let us know if something was going on or if anything has changed or if we have any updates, but no we haven’t had any discussions since Annual Meetings.”
In short, the Lions have left the ball in Smith’s court, and if any reunion is going to happen, it’ll be prompted by Smith himself.
Detroit has not fielded any calls for trading the 28th pick
It’s probably no surprise given how low the Lions are picking, but Holmes revealed that he hasn’t received any calls—neither trade up or trade down in nature—for the team’s 28th overall pick.
Obviously, that can—and quite possibly will—change depending on how the board falls, but with no clarity on who will be available around Detroit’s pick, it’s no surprise that their phones haven’t been very active yet.
In the past, the Lions have attempted another Jameson Williams-like trade up
Staying on the topic of trading up and down, Holmes let an interesting nugget slip while making a point about how it’s not always easy to draft the guy you want, even if you’re willing to trade up. Back in 2022, the Lions made a massive jump—from Pick 32 to Pick 12—to draft Jameson Williams. Holmes said that is not the only time the team has tried to do that.
“That hasn’t been the only year that we have attempted to do that, not (necessarily) at that specific position, but just for a player,” Holmes said. “It takes two people to do a trade. There’s some teams that just don’t want to go that far back. It takes two.”
Holmes didn’t offer any details on when that was or for which player, but it does speak to his fearlessness in going to grab a player. That’s something to certainly think about with the Lions holding the 28th overall pick.
Lions are going to prefer quality over quantity
The Lions roster is in an interesting position where Holmes faces a bit of a paradox. On one hand, Detroit could use as many players as possible on a rookie deal to help offset some of the high-market extensions they are likely to sign in the upcoming season. But at the same time, there are so few open roster spots on the 53-man roster that if they just accumulate a ton of rookies in a single draft, several of those player likely won’t end up making the team.
So Holmes was asked if he preferred to load up on younger players to maintain that financial flexibility or if it was more important to just get a few guys they really liked. Holmes made his answer pretty clear.
“The way that I kind of view it is let’s take care of the main thing first and just see if we can get the best football players for us first, and then we’ll deal with what we have to do later,” Holmes said. “I’d rather have a surplus of good football players that we really, really like and increase great problems to have. That might increase great problems to have, but I’d rather have those great problems instead of not having great problems to have.”
You could read this as Holmes may be more willing to trade up than down—and his history suggests that’s true, too. But when asked specifically about his relatively high track record of trading up vs. trading down, Holmes insisted it depends on each draft.
“I don’t really go into it as, ‘Man, I’ve got to trade up, I’ve got to trade up, I’ve got to trade up.’ But trading back is just how many of those players would be available and how much less of a player would you be getting? Or if the players are going to be the same and it looks—the more rational thing to get more assets, but it’s case-by-case.”
That said, Holmes did even hint that because of where the roster is at, they may not have enough spots for every draft pick.
“I don’t think that where we are now as a roster is going to lessen my desire to want to go get more better football players,” Holmes said. “Obviously, the more depth that you build and when the roster’s harder to make, sometimes it does say, ‘Look, maybe stay patient and just see. Or maybe go up and get the guy you really want and you don’t use those other draft picks.’”
The Lions are pretty flexible when it comes to adhering with a trade value charts
Many teams have their own version of a draft value trade chart , which they reference in order to make what they deem is a fair value swap of draft picks. These charts assign value points to each pick in the draft, so that when two teams come together for a pick-for-pick swap, general managers can evaluate whether they’re getting a fair deal.
The Lions have a trade value chart of their own, but it was interesting to hear Holmes talk about the team’s flexibility. While some teams must get a deal that is even down to the exact points according to their own models, Holmes is much more flexible.
“I’ve spoken with teams during the draft and they’re like, ‘The minuscule points are off,’ and it’s like, ‘Come on, man. Give me a break,’” Holmes said. “But that’s their philosophy. We’re kind of like, ‘It’s in the range.’ This is the player that we want, this is the deal we want to do, and then we do it.”