Now that it's official and the Lions have a new General Manager (and Executive VP), I'm going to dig in a bit more.

Probably take a few days, gonna use the same thread for all of it.

To start off, Holmes wasn't my first choice and I'm not super excited for it. Debbie downer from the start, right?

As I've said before the hire, though, it's only basing that upon tendencies of the candidates were from.

It's as close to math as you can get, just what they were involved in, what works, and my own preferences.

I expect as I dig in more and more, some of those opinions will change, for better or worse.

Which is what you do with more information.

So first, my initial thoughts unfiltered. Just what I felt based on a relatively light viewing of the players acquired in draft and FA, or extended, for each of the GM candidates the Lions interviewed.

Holmes was near the bottom of my list because the Rams, during his time, had several tendencies that we've seen before.

Drafting OL with poor athletic profiles frequently, spending premium draft resources on RBs frequently, spending huge money on RB contract, all issues.

On defense, in general speed wasn't a priority and attention to the front seven wasn't given when and how it was needed.

All these issues reminded me of Martin Mayhew, who did all that in addition to screwing up the back 7 as well.

Many of the gambles made weren't good.

Considering his position, I think it's fair to weight heavily towards the draft over FA and stuff in terms of Holmes' involvement.

So let's look at those tendencies in depth, starting with the most important position and the most important question.

What do they do at QB and what happens with Stafford?

Since 2010, of which Holmes was a part of the org, the team drafted four QBs, three of them in the first three rounds.

The success rate was...not good.

Most recently with Jared Goff, the team also spent a 3rd rounder on Sean Mannion (Which has been argued as one of the worst QB selections in recent memory), a 6th rounder on Garrett Gilbert, and another 1st overall pick on Sam Bradford.

Goff was, in my opinion, a freaking terrible pick. Immobile and unathletic on tape, with a poor to mediocre arm, the upside to picking him was incredibly low, as were analytics evaluating him in most measurable ways.

Just, no bueno at all.

Sam Bradford, his other 1st overall pick, was ALSO practically immobile as a QB prospect. Though a much better passer than Goff, there were arm strength questions (that were more than valid) as well as injury concerns.

Sean Mannion? Not only immobile, he rushed for NEGATIVE 804 yards in college.

Aside from being taller, he had the same concerns about arm strength as the other two.

Garrett Gilbert, that 6th rounder, wasn't IMmobile in college, but mobility wasn't his strong suit either.

I'll look back on the Rams rosters another time, but based on three high draft picks there is a very clear trend here.

And it isn't a good one.

Mobility not only isn't prioritized, it's practically a sin.

Arm strength isn't valued nearly as much as it should be.

So does Stafford stick?

Based on who the Rams targeted and spent high resources on, Stafford freaking better stick.

I wouldn't trust the evaluation of my team's signal caller to someone who thought a statue with a noodle arm was the best choice three separate times.

Normally I'd do RB next, but I know my opinion on their approach at RB is largely negative and it's not likely to change to a positive with a deeper dive, so we'll come back to that so it doesn't seem like I'm dunking on the hire.

Trying to be objective, don't want to seem not.

So let's jump over to Tight End. There are some wrinkles here, but my initial opinion of this is otherwise fairly positive.

The Rams with Holmes didn't spend premium resources on tight end. Only two day two picks in the last decade, in fact. Some of that, at least recently, is due to offensive philosophy, but it's quite different than the Lions, who throw money at tight ends like crazy people.

When the team did draft a tight end, they mostly went after elite athletes. Since 2005, they drafted nine TE who tested and six were elite #RAS guys.

Zero were below average.

HUGE plus here as this is the softest test you can give for athletics analytics (Lions sucked at it).

One note here is that they also drafted SERIOUS character flags. Will come back to that later, but this is the first time it came up.

That would be a departure for this team from the last few staffs.

So back to RB.

One of the biggest, dumbest issues with the past two Lions GMs was how they handled the RB position.

Always trying to find the next Barry, this team spent high picks on RBs like they were a perennial super bowl contender who just needed a RB to remain in play.

It's been a running gag. Every other year the Lions draft a RB.

RB looks promising.

RB gets hurt.

Lions draft a new RB with a premium pick.

The cycle continues.

The Rams drafted five RBs in the first three rounds from 2012-2020.

One of them was a top 10 pick.

Who they later paid like 60 million dollars despite his bad knees. He is not currently on their roster.

So this is a huge organizational fail in terms of resource expenditure.

But how good were the RBs themselves?

Isaiah Pead-2nd rd-100 career yards
Tre Mason-3rd-900 yds, out after 2 yrs
Todd Gurley-10th ovl, great player, terrible knees, gone after signing huge contract
Darrell Henderson-3rd-looks good, but hurt
Cam Akers-2nd-looks good so far

The value was far worse than the players, and their current stable were picked high in consecutive years.

So yes, I'm going to be back to scouting most RBs every year, which I hate because it's just burning money.

Moving on to Wide Receiver before I drop this for now and come back to it probably tomorrow.

The Rams spent an early pick in 2020 and 2017 on a WR, but ahve otherwise largely avoided spending much at the position.

It's largely worked out for them.

They've also largely ignored athletic testing at the WR position. Mixed results, that.

Too early to tell with 2020 2nd rounder Van Jefferson. I personally very much disliked the value of this pick, but I'm not going to pretend his poor rookie statline is some vindication of that.

Plenty of time.

3rd rounder Cooper Kupp from 2017 may have had a poor athletic profile, but he's been a very good value pick for Rams. Injuries an issue.

Kupp also a good example of typing at WR, but I'm not going to go into that tangent here.

Josh Reynolds was the opposite. Had the profile, didn't really put it all together. Has been a decent contributor, and for a 4th rounder that's plenty value.

Pharoh Cooper was drafted for ST value and he had that. Again, good value for what he was needed for.

Summing this up a bit, since whiffing on Tavon Austin (lots of things went into that), Holmes and the Rams have played a tricky game of prioritizing and valuation at wide receiver and have largely hit on them.

Considering the Lions currently only have two wide receivers, neither of whom are starting quality or close to it, this is going to be a position to watch in 2021.

You need to fill up your WR room on a budget, Holmes seems to have a plan on how to do that.

Gonna drop for a bit, I'll come back to this with OL another time.

Time for Tackles.

This was a concern of mine.

The Lions last GM had his wrinkles, but Quinn was able to find a couple of OL who could dance and he made a big shift towards more athletic OL. These are not unrelated events.

The previous GM, Martin Mayhew, often targeted lower tier athletes on the line and the team's OL struggled mightily in large part because they couldn't hang with the athletes across from them.

Dismantling the OL put Quinn in a hole he got out of only by ignoring many other areas

So my initial view of the Rams tendencies while Holmes was there was not great.

6 of his 14 OT picks were sub 5.00 RAS guys.

Important to note that while starters are super important, we've seen with the Lions that depth can't be a steep dropoff or you're in for trouble.

Rams actually hit on one of these low chance guys in Rob Havenstein. Probably never going to see a pro bowl or be on any top tackles lists, but he's good.

Still not a gamble you make by the numbers, but willingness to look beyond them as needed is a positive.

That said, the rest of those OT picks are a minefield, regardless of testing.

Big reason playing the numbers is important once you start considering volume.

On the interior of the line, it's much the same story. Too many low level athletes and playing bad numbers. Literally half of all interior OL are sub 5.00.

Worse, there's no success stories unless you go all the way back to Richie Incognito in 2005, and he had...other problems.

So three of the five units on offense are serious concerns for me based on draft history.

I don't trust the new GM's evaluation of OL or QB, nor do I trust how he may value the RB position with a depleted roster like this one.

Pass catchers should be fine, if less exciting.

Continuing this thread on defense now.

I'm sure some of you feel like I was just piling it on against Holmes, but this is probably the bit you should have waited for.

During Holmes' entire tenure with the Rams, they maintained the same tactics when drafting DE/EDGE.

One part awesome, one part dumb.

The awesome part is extremely meaningful.

The dumb part, kind of a minor annoyance.

Weight my next few comments accordingly.

In the early rounds, the Rams with Holmes have ONLY targeted elite athletes at pass rusher.

It's only a few picks over a decade and a half, but 100% of their early edge picks were 8.00+ RAS pass rushers.

Edge is one of the most dependent positions on player athletic ability. Think of a top tier pass rusher that wins every single season, that's an elite athlete who tested that way.

Very few exceptions, and the few that are often don't sustain.

This isn't rocket surgery.

Late rounds? It gets spotty. A couple top tier athletes recently, but most of the 5-7 round guys were bottom tier athletes. Considering coaching staffs, this is probably tied to scheme preference.

Don't draft poor athletes ever at edge. Hit rate is tiny.

Adding to this, I know it's not draft related, but shows preference, is that they went the same way in free agency.

Clearly speed and explosiveness are huge plusses that they look for.

Just gonna pause for a second to appreciate this.

Patricia/Quinn favored only length, size, and gap soundness on the edge.

We get to start looking at REAL pass rushers again. The kind who get after the passer and don't just wait until the corners hold them long enough.

Defensive tackles under Patricia and Quinn were just nose tackles. All nose tackles all the time. If you were big, strong, and slow, that was their dudes.

So how does Holmes stack up to that type of clearly well thought out approach?

Well, they drafted some Aaron Donald guy, and he's done alright.

But there's a lot more here to like.

Sebastian Joseph is one of their most recent DT picks and seriously, this guy would have been like the bottom of a Quinn/Patricia draft board. Explosive AND fast? Also quick? Sorry, not 330 or bigger, just not a dude for us.

The rest of the DT picks are similar types, but the big takeaway here is that they were looking for explosive interior rushers in general and gambled on the right kind of athletes compared to where they were drafted.

Been a while. This is a good thing.

Might actually start seeing some Da'Shawn Hand type of athletes on the regular instead of just...you know...once in a GM's tenure.

Now, the moment many of you were waiting for.

Linebackers.

Spoiler alert, Brad Holmes is better at evaluating linebackers than Bob Quinn.

Spoiler alert spoiler alert, it would be catastrophically bad if he somehow wasn't.

In his entire tenure with the Rams, Brad Holmes was only involved in ONE linebacker selection that was a bad athletic gamble.

And it was the sixth round.

Which is where you can do that without much deserved criticism.

More recently, this is the type of linebacker that has been focused in on.

Explosiveness is a big deal for a LB prospect, and that's been a focus.

But wait, you say, Lions did have Davis, who was a great athlete!

Yes, but we're talking trend. Lions had Tavai, Jones, Ragland, they LOVED linebackers with size who couldn't move to save their lives.

Not so here. Explosive, fast, quick when they can get it.

It's deliberate, just like it was with MP/BQ.

Only difference is that this approach is one that has a strong track record of success instead of simply a limited one that requires an elite back end to work.

We're 3 for 3 so far, so if you didn't check out when I went over his offensive tendencies, I hope you're enjoying this bit a lot more.

On to Cornerbacks!

Trading for Jalen Ramsey is a no brainer in terms of why.

And while it would point to a reliance on testing, Ramsey was a proven commodity by that point. The fact he's an all world athlete is kind of secondary, so I'm gonna kind of ignore it for this exercise.

Don't pad stats.

Most recent CB pick is promising testing wise, but size is a focal point here as well.

Holmes is willing to draft smaller corners if it suits them, and this trend continues over time.

Is that a big deal? Not really a huge one, but we're coming off a staff that had fairly rigid testing standards. Flexibility is a good start, especially since we don't know the staff yet.

Opens up the possibilities.

It's not across the board, but he generally seemed to favor the better athletes in the early rounds while being more willing to draft guys with poorer testing in the later rounds.

This is 100% the strategy to have as far as cornerbacks go and the sample size is plenty big enough

On to safeties, and I'm really excited for this one.

So. Quick note on #RAS for those who aren't as familiar, or for those who are but maybe just use it how it was (mostly) intended as a quick, user friendly, 'put a number on it' kind of thing.

The breakdown of RAS is more important than the raw score.

So while it's easy to say yup, elite score great, yup, low score bad, there's some nuance at some positions that we can't ignore.

Safety is one such position, and there's some typing that happens at safety I don't think gets talked about as much as it does for other positions.

Even in the same job, with same responsibilities, different types of guys can succeed at safety.

Deep safety for instance requires a good deal of range. That CAN be a great straight line 40, like Tracy Walker or a star like Earl Campbell, but that's not the only type who win.

Rams, with Holmes, have done an EXCELLENT job identifying the types of players who could succeed in that type of role despite not matching the sometimes preconceived idea of what that should look like.

By now you've probably read about Holmes' involvement in Jordan Fuller's drafting and subsequent hit (so far) in the NFL.

While it was by no means a sure thing, don't get it twisted, it WAS a good gamble both in pick and valuation.

A poor 40 isn't good, but if you have a safety with a poor 40 you're going to look at his explosiveness and his agility next if you think he's fast on tape.

If he's explosive and/or quick, then it's only long speed that's a concern, not what is referred to as playing speed.

Fuller isn't even the only example of this with the Rams recently. They had the same thing with Taylor Rapp.

Note that despite a poor 40, Rapp had much better splits and just ridiculous agi drills.

And again with John Johnson.

Johnson tested better than the others overall, but note again the poor 40 but stronger agi drills, explosion, and splits.

That's three recent players, we've got a trend.

They didn't limit themselves to a single prototype, though. Rookie Terrell Burgess fit the more traditional 'rangy' type of profile.

This is a best of both worlds type of situation.

You have someone willing to accept that sometimes things just are what they look like, but you've also got someone willing to look beyond the basic numbers WITHOUT ignoring the data in front of them.

Analytics at its core isn't some magic formula. It's a willingness to accept data as a viable tool in evaluation of a roster, a player, or a system.

It's not binary. A player isn't a 0 or a 1. There's nuance to an analytical approach, just like there is to tape study.

I know people didn't like my relatively negative assessment of Holmes' drafts on offense, but batting 1.000 on defense wasn't done as some form of appeasement.

The Rams simply have done right things and made the right gambles despite limited resources on that side of the ball.

So, couple days later, let's take a look at the whole big picture so far.

Based on the tendencies shown by the Rams organization during Brad Holmes' time there, focusing more on recent selections when possible but considering the entirety of his tenure, here's what I've got...(1/4)

I would consider it a good signing for a team looking to retool their entire defense, but a poor one if we apply that to the other side of the ball

Looking just at what the Lions need, it 100% makes sense. They need everything on defense and they need to rebuild their WR cp. 2/4

I worry if they consider starting over at QB and don't trust his evaluations there.

I also worry that his tendencies at RB would allow him to overspend on RB with high picks, as Lions have done repeatedly before, which can mitigate improvements elsewhere. (3/4)

I also worry that we may see a step back with the offensive line. This team has been trying to fix that group through multiple GMs and they finally had some headway.

I'd hate to see a case of one step forward two steps back with the OL as a casualty. (4/4)

And that's it for now! I have some other thoughts on the hiring that I'll go into regarding things other than the draft, but I'll probably do a new thread on that since this is pretty long and focused anyway.

As a bonus, throwing in this response to this thread from @BigDaddyDrix to sum it up nicely.