Lions GM Holmes supposedly helped guide the decision to draft Goff

Maybe he would double down on Goff?


[www.prideofdetroit.com]
4 things to know about new Detroit Lions GM Brad Holmes
A look at the most important things to know about Detroit’s newest GM.

By Jeremy Reisman@DetroitOnLion Jan 14, 2021, 1:04pm EST 51 Comments

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NFL Draft
Photo by Jon Durr/Getty Images
The Detroit Lions made one of their critical offseason decision on Thursday, hiring Rams director of college scouting Brad Holmes as their next general manager.

Typically, there’s not a ton of information out there on someone in his position. They aren’t required to do any media hits. They often work in the shadows and go overlooked and underappreciated.

However, if you dig deep enough, there are some interesting tidbits scattered across the media about Holmes and the job he’s done for nearly two decades with the Los Angeles Rams. Here are the four most important things to know about the Lions’ new general manager.

Before we get into it, here are some valuable resources you should really read on Holmes:

Freep: Holmes is “very much a young Ozzie Newsome”
The Athletic: Inside the Rams’ draft process
Yahoo! Sports: Why Brad Holmes got into scouting
The Athletic: Data, film and luck: How the Rams hit the jackpot on Jordan Fuller
CBS Sports: Why the Rams have traded away so many first-round picks
Holmes worked his way up from the bottom
Holmes actually took his first NFL job with the Rams as public relations intern in 2003. But due to his people skills, he quickly took up a friendship with running backs coach Wilbert Montgomery, who almost immediately got him a job in the team’s scouting department.

Then, as a scouting assistant, he vowed to get deeper and deeper within the organization.

“I tried to be the best scouting assistant,” Holmes told Yahoo’s Eric Edholm in 2019. “I want to get the coffee the fastest, I want to make the best profile tape possible, and all of that. When I was an area scout, I wanted to be the best at that. You know what I mean? So I never really looked ahead. Opportunities — all of them blessings — have landed on me, and I’ve just kind of earned my way to where I am now.”

Lo and behold, he eventually worked his way all the way up to director of college scouting just 10 years after starting at the bottom of the Rams organization. Now he’s managing an entire NFL franchise.

He was key in the Rams’ decision to draft Aaron Donald, Jared Goff
After a scout could not stop gushing about Donald, Holmes trusted his department enough to go out and take a look at the stud defensive tackle himself. Vincent Bonsignore of The Athletic described what happened when Holmes dropped in during for a University of Pittsburgh practice. He got a tip from then Panthers defensive coordinator Matt House to show up extra early.

When Holmes arrived at the practice field at 2:45, all he saw were the Pitt specialists going through their normal pre-practice routine. Nothing unusual about that. Then he glanced over to the Pitt bench, and what he saw blew him away.

Sitting all by himself, completely taped up and in full uniform and practically champing at the bit to get to work, was none other than Aaron Donald.

“And he had this body language that was screaming, ‘I’ve been waiting on this all day. I’ve been looking forward to this all day,’” Holmes said. “And I mean … it’s a Tuesday practice.”

In 2016, Rams general manager Les Snead went directly to Holmes and asked if it would be worthwhile to trade up and draft Jared Goff. Per Jonathan Jones of CBS Sports, he didn’t hesitate to say yes.

“I’m running through my mind and it seemed like we went down every avenue except doing what other teams do and just truly getting a top-notch quarterback that you have to spend on,” Holmes says. “That’s the one avenue that we haven’t gone down. …We’ve identified Goff as a clear franchise quarterback, so let’s expend the resources to get up and just get the guy.”

Snead trusted his guy and sent a first, two seconds and a third-round selection to move up 14 spots and take Goff with a fourth and sixth round pick in return.

The Rams trusted him enough to give away early-round picks... and it’s worked
The Rams gave up multiple draft picks for Goff. They sent a first-round pick away for Brandin Cooks in 2018. They traded a two first-round picks for Jalen Ramsey in 2019.

The national narrative on those moves were that they were mortgaging the future to win now. But that’s not what the Rams were thinking at the time.

Here’s Bonsignore on our podcast a couple weeks ago:

“We’re doing that because we believe that we can go find talent beyond just that first round,” Bonsignore said of the Rams’ approach. “We have confidence that our staff is going to be able to still do the job even without those big first round picks. That was the inner-confidence in the building and obviously that’s come to fruition.”

The Rams have a ton of starters from their last few drafts
Despite not having any first round picks since that 2016 selection of Goff, the Rams have built a roster full of depth and starters from deeper in the draft. Here’s a look at some the players who have started at least eight games in the 2020 season (or would’ve, if not for injury)

2017:

WR Cooper Kupp (third round)
S John Johnson (third round)
LB Samson Ebukam (fourth round)
2018:

OT Joseph Noteboom (third round)
C Brian Allen (fourth round)
LB Micah Kiser (fifth round)
DT Sebastian Joseph (sixth round)
2019:

S Taylor Rapp (second round)
RB Darrell Henderson (third round)
OT David Edwards (fifth round)
2020:

RB Cam Akers (second round)
S Jordan Fuller (sixth round)
And that’s not including UDFAs or role players that don’t earn starting jobs. Note how many of those picks (six) are on defense. The Rams finished the 2020 season fourth in defensive DVOA and best in points allowed.

[www.freep.com]
New Detroit Lions GM Brad Holmes has one very important qualification: Evaluating QBs
Carlos Monarrez
Detroit Free Press

Hagiography.

If you’re not familiar with the word, it means an idealized or idolizing biography of a venerated person or saint.

And you’re about to get plenty of it with Brad Holmes, the Los Angeles Rams’ director of college scouting whom the Detroit Lions hired as their general manager Thursday.

I’m not against praising anyone’s accomplishments. But we should be careful how much we buy in to unadulterated exaltation. We should scrutinize the hiring of any top executive or coach. We should balance gushing praise with healthy skepticism.

JEFF SEIDEL:Lions GM Brad Holmes is an exciting hire who wants 'game wreckers'

Of course, we’ll get nothing but puppies and rainbows from the Lions.

“On behalf of the entire Lions organization, I am thrilled to welcome Brad Holmes to Detroit,” owner Sheila Ford Hamp said in a statement Thursday. “Several weeks ago when we embarked on this process, it was critical that we find the right person to fit our vision for this team. It was evident early on that Brad is a proven leader who is ready for this opportunity. We are thrilled to introduce him to our fans as a member of our football family.”

Brad Holmes is the new general manager of the Detroit Lions.
But let’s not forget this is what team president Rod Wood said about hiring Bob Quinn in 2016: "We are thrilled to have agreed to a deal with Bob to make him our new general manager. "As Mrs. (Martha) Ford indicated at the outset, our search would be national in scope, and we would do everything possible to identify the very best person to lead our football operation. We believe Bob is that person.”


“Thrilled” must either be some kind of code word or part of a drinking game in Allen Park. Non-alcoholic Kool-Aid, of course.

Nationally, people weren’t so thrilled, seemingly falling out of the national consciousness as fast as it popped up Thursday morning.

I know media attention and fan interest isn’t a great indicator of anyone’s potential. But it’s some kind of barometer that tells us the rest of the football world was underwhelmed by Holmes’ hiring. And yes, count me among them.


But to prove my commitment to fairness and balance, I’ll start by praising what might be Holmes’ most important qualification: drafting the right quarterback.

Holmes supposedly helped guide the decision to draft Jared Goff instead of Carson Wentz with the top overall pick in 2016. If that’s true, it speaks to Holmes’ potential to draft the right quarterback — or at least not the wrong one — for the Lions this year or sometime soon after.

It’s not like Goff is the next Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady. But what I find refreshing about Holmes’ potential is his willingness to admit he learned from his mistakes. As a young combine scout, he whiffed on evaluations of Kentucky quarterback Andre Woodson and Louisville quarterback Brian Brohm.

Los Angeles Rams quarterback Jared Goff warms up before a playoff game against the Seattle Seahawks, Saturday, Jan. 9, 2021, in Seattle.
“That spring heading into their senior year, I put some huge grades on both of those guys,” he told Yahoo.com in 2019. “And I just thought, like, ‘Oh, these are what pro quarterbacks look like.’ They were big, strong arms, pedigrees and all that.

“They just didn’t end up panning out to what I thought at the time. It didn’t really affect my confidence. I knew I was still in a developmental stage as an evaluator. It really just made me roll up my sleeves as an evaluator and say, ‘Hey, man, I really need to get better at evaluating QBs.’”

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The problem is that if Holmes gets credit for helping draft Goff and Aaron Donald, what kind of blame does he get for a huge miss on tackle Greg Robinson with the No. 2 overall pick and, to a lesser degree, quarterback Sean Mannion in the third round?

The Goff situation could be at the heart of where Holmes will lead the Lions because it took a massive trade by Rams GM Les Snead with Tennessee to move up from No. 15 to No. 1. The question is how much will Holmes mimic Snead, an aggressive deal-maker who loves flashy trades like acquiring Jalen Ramsey, and gets rid of high draft picks like they’re red-hot coals burning his hands.

It’s impossible to predict what kind of GM Holmes will be, but my guess is he will be somewhat like Snead, who has been the Rams’ GM the entire time Holmes was the college scouting director. Holmes likely has been influenced by other mentors, but since he never worked on the pro side of scouting or personnel acquisition, it makes the most sense that he will borrow from Snead’s example.

And that means it could get messy because Holmes will have to decide if he wants to adhere to the so-called “Rams standard” of having players who are “good teammates” and “relentless” as well as “smart players, instinctive players, explosive players.”

Yeah … about that. Remember the Rams are the team that signed Ndamukong Suh and Ramsey, who almost came to blows with Jaguars coach Doug Marrone on the sideline.


I think real leadership, at its most effective, is about communication and compromise. If Holmes doesn’t needlessly tie himself to some made-up slogan from his former team and embraces the harsh truth about the Lions and their history of failure, he could begin to write some chapters in his hagiography that truly would be worth reading.

Contact Carlos Monarrez at cmonarrez@freepress.com and follow him on Twitter @cmonarrez.