The Detroit Lions are changing up their pre-draft process

Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell and exec. vice president and general manager Brad Holmes walk off the field together during day two of the Detroit Lions training camp at the Detroit Lions Headquarters in Dearborn, Mich. on Thursday, July 25, 2024.

This offseason, Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell promised that, after a failed 2025 season, they will look at everything they do to see what needs to change.

“When it doesn’t work the way that we want it to work, it’s a number of things,” Campbell said back in January. “There are a lot of things that go into it. And do I have a couple of ideas. Maybe, right now, but I need some time here. I need time to really sit down and think about all this. But what we do know is one way or another probably change is inevitable. Now, it may not be much, but there will be something that’ll change.”

Apparently, that includes a couple of changes in how they do their NFL Draft evaluation.

On Monday, Lions general manager Brad Holmes broke down two significant changes in his pre-draft process for the 2026 season. The first was that he skipped the NFL owners meetings in March because he felt like it caused him to fall behind during a critical portion of their evaluation process.

“For our process, it’s a lot of time that you miss. So, by the time that you get back, I’m kind of in a make-up mode because of all the time that you missed for our process,” Holmes said. “So, that’s why I kind of just said, look, in order for me to try to kind of avoid being in that make-up mode—because now you hop into draft meetings with the scouts, and it keeps rolling, but you’ve missed a good chunk of time for us. So, that’s what went into it this year.”

But that isn’t the only thing Holmes changed up to save some time. This year, the team opted not to do a local pro day. That event, which allows teams to host players from local colleges or Detroit natives for an in-facility workout and testing, is an annual opportunity to get a much closer look at a ton of different prospects.

However, Holmes believes that time could be better spent and that any local prospects they want to take a look at can still be brought in through their unlimited local pre-draft visits.

“Just internally we kind of made a decision to utilize that time for some other things, but still utilize the local visits as well,” Holmes said. “We still utilize the local visits, but we just made the decision really last summer to do away with the pro day.”

It’s interesting to see the Lions change up some long-standing traditions in their draft process, and it certainly shows a willingness to self-scout and adapt. However, Holmes also said, when it comes to their elimination of the local pro day, they’re more than willing to bring it back if they believe cutting it was a mistake.

“We’ll see how it goes. If we feel like we missed something by not doing it, we’ll look at it and adjust again.”