Our 3-round Detroit Lions mock draft highlights why Brad Holmes’ biggest challenges awaits.

In the last three NFL drafts, Detroit Lions general manager Brad Holmes has managed to find multiple starters every year. In 2021, he found starters in Penei Sewell, Alim McNeill, Amon-Ra St. Brown—and late bloomers Ifeatu Melifonwu and Derrick Barnes. That’s a ridiculous haul, in retrospect. The following year, he acquired Aidan Hutchinson and Kerby Joseph—two bonafide starters—and complemented them with role players (with much higher ceilings) in Jameson Williams and Josh Paschal. Last year, he somehow topped himself with four starters right out the gate: Jahmyr Gibbs, Jack Campbell, Sam LaPorta, and Brian Branch.

This is all to say that Holmes has set the bar incredibly high for himself. But the 2024 NFL Draft will be the most difficult of all. For one, he has far less draft capital than any other season. Each previous season, he started with a top-10 pick. Now, his first pick is currently at 29th. Additionally, the Lions have just three picks in the top 150. Last year, he had six. In 2022, he had four. In 2021, he had six. Holmes is both lacking in top-end picks, and mid-tier picks, as Detroit is currently has a chasm between their third round pick (73rd overall) and their fifth-round pick (164).

This puts a lot of pressure on Detroit first three picks in the NFL Draft, and as Ryan Mathews and myself found out this week, that will not be an easy task.

We completed a three-round mock, and explained our choices on this week’s PODcast. And as we explain on the show, Holmes faces an interesting conundrum early in the draft. In our opinion, there are a ton of options for Detroit’s first pick at 29 overall. But the 32-pick wait until their second-round pick (61 overall) causes a pretty significant drop-off in talent. We had 11 legitimate options with the 29th overall pick, but every single one of them was gone by 61.

You can listen to our entire deliberation in the podcast feed below—or you can watch the show on YouTube and Twitch. But if you’re just looking for the picks, here they are:

• Round 1, Pick 29: LSU WR Brian Thomas Jr.
• Round 2, Pick 61: Wake Forest CB Caelen Carson
• Round 3, Pick 73: Yale OL Kiran Amegadjie

You may be underwhelmed by that haul (and we admittedly took some reaches to talk about some under-the-radar players we like), but that’s kind of the point. This class isn’t likely to live up to Holmes’ previous hauls, both because of the limited draft capital and because of how good Detroit’s roster already is.

We also ran a second three-round mock, but I’m not going to give that one away for free. You can jump to the 50-minute mark in the podcast to hear those selections.

Here’s a link to the show, or you can listen to it embedded below.