ALLEN PARK — After remaining quiet on Tuesday’s NFL trade deadline, [Detroit Lions](https://detroitnews.sports.gracenote.com/football/nfl/team/1) head coach Dan Campbell said Wednesday that the team explored multiple options to bolster its depth but didn’t find any options worth the value of the pick they would’ve had to give up to acquire that player.
Campbell asserted earlier this week that he felt good about where the roster is at and maintained that perspective on Wednesday.
“There was some things here and there, but it was just, there was nothing that … I would say (was) enough to be noteworthy,” Campbell said. “I mean, it was certainly more intriguing, but it wasn’t good enough. So, all good. All good and we’re ready to roll.”
The Lions were in a precarious spot as the deadline approached. Most of the positions on the roster had adequate depth, and all — except the secondary and offensive line — have a relatively healthy starting unit at the moment.
However, they anticipate returning a majority of their defensive backs in the near future, which left the offensive line as the chief priority. And unfortunately for Detroit, that type of player is hard to acquire in-season.
Campbell didn’t feel like any of the options were worth giving up a pick for, relative to the players they already have on the roster. Detroit has several veteran options it will task with filling the void left by an injured Christian Mahogany, who is out until at least late December with a broken bone in his leg.
“Dude, I feel good. I’ll say this again: My job is to freaking get these guys ready to play on Sunday,” Campbell said. “And I’ve got the roster to do it. We’ve got depth, we’ve got the dudes, we’ve got weapons, we’ve got a quarterback. I gotta do my part. I gotta do my job, and I gotta get ‘em ready, and I gotta make sure we cross all the T’s and dot the I’s, and that, man, we turn over every stone and make sure our guys are ready to roll, and we help them get ready to roll.
“So, man, I feel great. I really do.”
The Lions are looking at adding Trystan Colon, Kayode Awosika, Kingsley Eguakun and Michael Niese to the rotation this week.
“You know your own guys. You’ve been around them. You’ve seen them. You know the greatness behind them, you know their warts, too, and we all got ‘em,” Campbell said. “… You know how they’re made, you know how they react under pressure, you know what they’re like every day in practice when they haven’t gotten an opportunity, but they want one. You see all these things, and as long as they’re continuing to grow and get better, then our trust goes up in these guys.”
Lions general manager Brad Holmes has developed a reputation for being stingy with his draft picks, and who can blame him? All of the success the Lions have achieved can be directly tied to Holmes’ drafting.
The Los Angeles Rams, with whom Holmes was molded into an NFL executive, have been notorious for using most of their draft capital to acquire immediate-impact players, a strategy that led them to a Super Bowl in 2021. Now that the Lions are a perennial contender, some would like to see Holmes use future picks to help the team win a Super Bowl in 2025.
The only problem with that sentiment, Campbell said, is that the Lions have a substantial amount of future cap commitments, which makes paying for any notable acquisition difficult, let alone the draft capital required to acquire them.
Campbell pushed back on the idea that he and Holmes wouldn’t be willing to make a splash if it made sense.
“When you start talking like that, like, throw all the picks away, that’s a lot,” Campbell said. “It’s a lot of capital, especially with guys that we’ve got that we’re signing; (we) want to continue to sign to keep what we have intact. Not only are you throwing the picks, you’ve gotta pay that player, too, probably. Otherwise, why are you throwing all the picks at a guy, but you’re buying him for a year? Then everything we plan for, you might as well throw in the trash.
“I don’t want to say ‘never.’ There’s not a ‘never.’”