5 takeaways from Brad Holmes’ press conference

Brad Holmes, the general manager of the Detroit Lions, had his yearly press conference on Monday to address the media. In just the third season of the Holmes-Dan Campbell period, the organization has advanced to the Super Bowl, and Holmes gave the fan base a clear message at the start of the session: keep believing in the process.

My top five conclusions from his media appearance are as follows:

1. Holmes’s greeting to his followers

Some could call that a one-off or Cinderella story—from a club that won nine games and missed the playoffs in 2022 to a 14-win squad that was 30 minutes from the Super Bowl.

Holmes should not be counted among them. He told the crowd on Monday that this Lions team is here to stay and that a new benchmark has been reached.

“Things will only get better,” he declared. “It can only get better from here. I want no one to believe that this was a fantastic, one-time Cinderella experience that happened by accident. No, it’s true. This is precisely what was intended to occur.”

Holmes expressed his dissatisfaction with the constant talk of the 2023 Lions being a “cute story.” He wanted the fan base to understand that every decision he and Campbell made was meant to maintain what they had already achieved and are still building. This has always been the strategy to make winning in Detroit the norm, and they intend to keep it that way for the time being.

2. Nowadays, intangibles are crucial.

Last week, Campbell discussed the young core of the team that is being developed here and how, when choosing which players to add, it’s not just about selecting the best players but also about making sure the newcomers mesh well with the team’s culture and possess the intangibles they desire. Holmes reaffirmed this viewpoint on Monday.

“We have to get past just looking for the most talented player,” Holmes stated. “In my opinion, that’s the prerequisite of evaluation.”

Anyone may identify the quickest, strongest, or most skilled player, he claimed, but fit and intangibles are just as important to him and his staff as skill.

“How do you find the right intangibles in a football player and that’s what’s made us who we are,” he stated. That’s my position regarding that draft class for 2021. It was done on purpose to identify the men who possessed the intangibles. ‘Oh, we’ll wait until the fourth round to choose a wide receiver,’ is not the mindset. We wanted St. Brown (Amon-Ra), that’s right. He possessed the intangibles we needed to lay the groundwork for our success.”

Grit is one of the major intangibles that Holmes is searching for, and he stated that it would never change.