Brad Holmes
Getty
Brad Holmes pushed back on Lions fans who think their title window is closed.
The 2025 NFL Season concluded for the Detroit Lions without a playoff berth despite a winning record, a disappointing end to what was a two-year reign as the NFC North Champions.
The offseason work for general manager Brad Holmes got going far earlier than anticipated, and it will be on him to make the kind of proper moves that will get the Lions back into Super Bowl contention.
However, that hasn’t stopped a contingent of Lions fans from believing that their Super Bowl window is rapidly closing, and that the first half of the 2024 NFC Championship Game against the San Francisco 49ers was the closest that they’ll get to advancing to what would have been the franchise’s first ever appearance in the Super Bowl.
However, during a recent appearance on the Rich Eisen Show, Holmes had a message for Lions fans who believe that their window is closing.
“I would push back on that, just because, even with the dilemma we’re facing now, is that we have a lot of young, ascending players that are eligible for extensions. Even look at this past season, I want to say that we had six Pro Bowl players, we had three All Pro caliber players that weren’t even available. That could have been more,” said Holmes. “So, I think that we’ve done in the draft in terms of these ascending young players, I think it’s given us an opportunity to keep our window open. And then also our quarterback, that he’s in his prime, he’s playing at a high level. Those alone keeps that window open.”
“I understand the situations, like yeah, you get that close to making it to the big game, and then you don’t make it that close again, okay? The easy narrative is okay, it’s closing because you missed your shot,” Holmes commented further. “That’s not what we believe. We still believe that our window’s open. Really, the way we operate is that we want to avoid windows. So, we actually do the best that we can to avoid windows.”
____________________________________________________________
Detroit Lions GM Brad Holmes Discussed The Roster Budget
Holmes discussed how he prefers to operate with the mindset of a single roster budget, noting that what they spend year to year on their roster takes away funds toward future assets.
“You don’t have two separate budgets, right? It’s only one budget. It’s only one pot, right? And so when you take the philosophy of draft, develop, and retain, right? Well, the more you let’s take the word retain,” he said.
“Well, the word retain means pay. You’ve got to pay money,” he continued. “Alright? So, if there’s one budget, you don’t have your own retain player budget and then a separate external free agent budget. Now, you can splice it up within that one budget.”
“This is how much you want to use to retain your own players. This is how much you want to use for external free agents. But the more you retain, the smaller that budget becomes.”