Digging for dirt, looking for grit: How Lions' college scouting aims to set GM Holmes up for gimme putts on draft night
Indianapolis — A little more than a year after Detroit Lions general manager Brad Holmes said “everyone can’t play here,” the team’s war room supplemented that messaging on the second night of the 2025 draft, sporting matching black hoodies with the letters “HWS” crossed out across the chest.
Holmes explained the meaning after the team made its two picks that evening.
“We’re all about film evaluation, and that’s the hard part of scouting,” Holmes said. “Height, weight (and) speed are easy, stats are easy, a position listed is easy, but film evaluation is hard to figure out.”
Never mind that those selections, Georgia guard Tate Ratledge and Arkansas receiver Isaac TeSlaa, are elite athletes who would check any NFL teams' measurement thresholds. The Lions determined they were organizational fits, based on the film.
Well, that still only paints a partial picture. The Lions, under Holmes, assign value to more than production. From the start of his tenure, there’s been a premium placed on football character — a passion for the game, unrelenting competitiveness and unmistakable toughness, often displayed by playing through injury.
If you lack those traits, no matter if you run the fastest 40 or are built like a Greek God, you can’t play here.
Some of that is discernible on film. Does the player give full effort, snap-to-whistle, regardless of the score? Does he suit up after spending the week on the injury report or return to action after getting rolled up on during the previous series?
It all matters. However, a comprehensive profile for each prospect is frequently the culmination of a years-long, ground-level investigation by the team’s scouting staff.
In the back of that war room last year, as Holmes was on the phone informing Ratledge he was being taken by the Lions, and others sharing the space with the GM celebrated, the leader of Detroit’s team of investigators stands calmly in the background, hands in his pockets, knowing he’s provided his boss the best information to make this choice.