Best and Worst of Detroit Lions Free Agency 2020
The 2020 free agency frenzy has died down, and the Detroit Lions…did some things.
Time is not on the side of Bob Quinn and Matt Patricia. After being given a vague ultimatum/edict/mandate by ownership to be a playoff contender in 2020, the Lions’ much-maligned front office knew that running back the same cast of characters and expecting drastic improvement was unlikely. So they shook things up in one last-ditch effort to find a combination of guys with the right personality and scheme “fit”, which has become quite the buzzword surrounding this regime. This undefinable “fit” will either fundamentally change the losing culture of the Detroit Lions or it will be the story that is etched on the tombstone of the QuinnTricia era in Detroit.
That being said, the Lions’ roster overhaul is going quite nicely from my vantage point. We said goodbye to some old friends in Darius Slay, Graham Glasgow, and others we will get to later in this exercise (check out my Slay breakdown here). But we have a slew of new ex-Patriots to get acquainted with (please tell me you saw that coming) who can tell us stories by the campfire about what it’s like to visit the mysterious and undisturbed ground known as the second round of the playoffs.
By my count, we have ten new faces that will be donning Honalulu Blue next season as of this writing. That doesn’t include their nine upcoming draft picks, or the fact that the Lions still have some loot to play with if the market comes down on some of the free agents still floating around out there (plenty of household names in that bunch too). There is a lot to digest here, and I’m not going to pretend to know enough about guys like Tony McRae – new Lions special teamer – to assign every acquisition a grade (if you are clamoring for deep analysis on a backup CB for a Cincinnati team that threatened to go winless last season, you need help that is beyond my pay grade).
So let’s narrow down the best and worst moves that went down over the past week, with some honorable mentions on each side of the coin as well.
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Best move: Trading for S Duron Harmon
This one literally checks all the boxes. Familiarity within the scheme, personality, contract value…and a fifth-round pick was all it took to nab him (also got a seventh in return). Of course, there is always the inexplicable collapse a player can suffer just by the mere association with the Detroit Lions organization, but the more I look at the details of this move, the more I will be stunned if it doesn’t work out.
Duron Harmon was a 2013 third-round pick of the Patriots (surprise surprise) who spent all seven of his pro seasons in New England. Matt Patricia was his Defensive Coordinator when he was drafted and had a front-row seat at Harmon’s development for four seasons, so he should know exactly what kind of player he is getting. The Lions will take on the final year of Harmon’s contract, clocking in at under $4.5 million, a drop in the bucket for a player of this quality. So why was he available? Likely because the Patriots had a surplus of talent at the position, with Harmon operating as a third safety behind Devin McCourty and Patrick Chung, and prioritized the cap savings over positional depth. But this is far from a case of a guy looking for his first real opportunity.
Harmon saw at least 50% of the defensive snaps in New England in each of the past five seasons, culminating in a 65% snap count in 2019 for a defense that was all-time great for a sizeable chunk of last season.
He wasn’t just out there leeching off of the production of the studs around him either, he was an active contributor. Harmon has 12 INTs over the course of his last three seasons alone (incl. playoffs), and creating turnovers was a glaring problem for the Lions’ defense in 2019. He puts himself in position for those picks on the back of his stellar coverage skills, which Pro Football Focus has noticed and prompted @United_NOLA on Twitter to put on his scuba gear to do a deeper dive…
A look at his highlight reel will show that Harmon has a knack for putting himself in position to come away with deflected balls and overthrows – particularly late in games (his nickname is “the closer”- based on his excellent reads as a deep free safety. He is just always around the ball, and should be quite the security blanket for Detroit’s young CBs like Amani Oruwariye and, potentially (likely), rookie Jeff Okudah.
Word on the street is that Harmon’s coverage abilities should allow third-year safety Tracy Walker and his freakish wingspan to become a more versatile playmaker. The Lions desperately need their best athletes to get to the quarterback, and with Harmon helping bring stability to the coverage unit it should allow Patricia to be more liberal in dialing up pressure. The Lions’ over-reliance on dropping everyone into coverage last season resulted in a league-worst QB pressure rate.
A final note on the Harmon trade is a lesson in things coming full-circle. One of my biggest pet peeves, in any sport, is when people overreact to a trade that involves a known commodity being swapped for draft picks and/or prospects. People typically fall on the side of the established player, since the other side of the deal is still unknown and human beings generally tend to be risk-averse and, above all, very impatient creatures.
The trade in question is from Oct.22 of 2019, when the Lions shipped Quandre Diggs to Seattle in exchange for a fifth-round pick. People were quick to pile on the Lions for this move, questioning how they could just “give away” a team captain and former Pro-Bowler for such a meager return. I cautioned people to wait and see what materialized on the Lions side of this deal before condemning the move, with a direct quote from my Week 7 observations reading “who knows what the trickle-down effect will be. Maybe this is the precursor to another, bigger move.”
Duron Harmon is what trickled-down. The fifth-round pick the Lions gave to New England in exchange for Harmon is the exact pick they acquired from Seattle for Diggs. Two safeties traded for one another with the exact same pick as compensation is about as apples-to-apples a comparison as you can get. Now we can safely go back and evaluate the Diggs trade as a whole. You can debate who the better player is between the two, since Harmon and Diggs have disparate skill sets. What cannot be questioned is that Harmon gels better with Matt Patricia (he likes his “fire”), comes at a lesser cap hit, and the Lions went 1-8 after trading Diggs last season, helping them plummet to the 3rd pick in the upcoming draft (a good thing). Six of those losses were of the one-score variety. If keeping Diggs wins them two more of those meaningless games, the Lions are instead looking at the ninth pick in the draft.
With all of that considered, give me Harmon and all the above benefits over Diggs, who is still a damn good player in his own right. Now I just have to pray that Harmon doesn’t drop off a cliff and make me look like an idiot.
Honorable mention: Signing LB Jamie Collins
Wait a minute…their best moves both involve poaching former New England Patriots? Praising these moves ruins all the fun.
Look, I get it. I don’t love the optics of the whole “Detroit Patriots” thing any more than the next guy. But other than LeGarrette Blount, who was spectacularly bad in 2018, the ex-Patriots they have brought in have all largely done their jobs. From Trey Flowers to Danny Amendola to Tavon Wilson…even Ricky Jean Francois. All of these players have either met or exceeded reasonable expectations (though Flowers will need to replicate his high-level of play to match his hefty contract).
This year’s crop of ex-Patriots looks to be a solid batch as well. While Harmon appears to be the high-floor play, the signing of Jamie Collins is more of an upside gamble. The Lions are giving the 2015 Pro-Bowler 3 yrs/$30 million to anchor their linebacker unit, a group that featured two of the worst players at the position in the NFL last season in Jarrad Davis and Christian Jones. If there was a position where they needed to spend significant money, this was it. Not that the contract is crippling or anything. It’s actually pretty reasonable in that it’s back-loaded and easy to get out of after year two without much dead money if things go south…like the way they did when Collins was traded to Cleveland in 2016.
Much like Harmon, Matt Patricia was Collins’ Defensive Coordinator in his first stint with New England (Collins returned to NE in 2019), and he logged 2.5 consecutive seasons as a top-ten player at the position under “Matty P” (that’s what the cool kids call him these days…although I’m sure some former Lions call him something slightly less fattering…er…flattering). After being traded to Cleveland things didn’t go so well, which is the reason this signing comes with some is-he-a-product-of-the-Patriots risk built in. We have seen high-level play from Collins and we have seen replacement-level play. The former will make him a bargain at this price, the latter will make him a bust.
I’m willing to bet he lands somewhere in the middle in terms of his productivity in Detroit, but closer to the NE version. He immediately picked up where he left off upon his return to NE in 2019, and when the Patriots were putting up historically great defensive numbers in the first half of 2019, Collins was brushing shoulders with legends himself…
Collins should be able to hit the ground running given his familiarity with Patricia’s system, and the Lions’ defense will likely feature four former Patriots teammates as starters, which should be good for communication and chemistry.
I’ve gotten a little heavy-handed on the grading and the rationalizations and whatnot in this post (it’s what I do), so let’s detour for a minute. Do you really wanna know why I like this signing? Because Jamie Collins is a freak who can do things like this…
He also says he wouldn’t go on American Ninja Warrior because it would be too easy. I’m not calling his bluff.
Worst move: Releasing LB Devon Kennard
This was the corresponding move to the Collins signing, as the Lions deemed Kennard expendable with a shiny new toy in their shopping cart. His release made him the third defensive captain to be released or traded in just over a calendar year, along with Glover Quin and Quandre Diggs.
I’m not gonna spend too much time caught up in the details on this one, because the reason this was the Lions’ worst move goes beyond football. Kennard was an adequate player on the field and was entering the final year of his modest deal in Detroit. He could have been transitioned to a rotational role behind Collins, kept around as insurance when the inevitable injury bug bites, or defensive “genius” Matt Patricia (Mike Daniels’ words, not mine) could have simply found a way to use Kennard and Collins alongside one another. But the Lions opted to cut bait, and in doing so sent their highest character guy packing. He was immediately scooped up by his hometown Cardinals and given an even bigger contract than the one he signed in Detroit back in 2018.
Kennard was the Lions’ Walter Payton Man of the Year nominee in 2019, an award that recognizes players’ off-field efforts in the community. Follow this link for a rundown of all of the projects he had a hand in during his short two years in Detroit. Or you can just watch this clip to see what the guy is all about.
Being a leader in the community and a fantastic representative for the team and city should carry significant monetary value. We could use as many Devon Kennards as we can get now more than ever given all the craziness going on in the world. It’s really confusing, given the recent purge of players due to personality clashes and locker room drama, that you wouldn’t value a guy like Kennard enough to even honor the full term of his contract. I took to Twitter to voice my frustrations when the news of his release broke…
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On the bright side, the Lions signed former Viking Jayron Kearse, who will pick up some of Kennard’s community service void. The difference is that Kearse’s is court-ordered after he plead guilty to DWI and driving with a loaded weapon. But he’s a fine special teams player, so it’s all good. What a joke.
Being a fan of a losing organization is much easier to swallow when you have guys like Matthew Stafford and Devon Kennard doing meaningful work that makes an impact on the world. Kennard the player can be replaced. Kennard the man cannot.
[Dis]Honorable mention: Signing QB Chase Daniel
Despite what the above montage might suggest, a Chase Daniel pass does not ignite the football, nor do his footsteps leave the Earth scorched.
Chase Daniel is…fine. A perfectly acceptable backup quarterback, who will provide a sense of stability that was clearly lacking after Matthew Stafford was lost due to a broken back midway through last season. The problem I have with this signing is more about my own personal philosophy on the position and what’s best for the team moving forward.
You can forget about the notion of Daniel, or any quarterback for that matter, being brought in to “push” Stafford or threaten his job security. Everyone knows Matthew Stafford is a bad boy. He’s a super stud. He’s a baller. A shot caller. He’s got 20-inch blades on the Impala.
I am of the opinion that a Stafford-or-bust strategy is the best way for the Lions to approach the season. A healthy Stafford playing at an MVP level makes the Lions a dangerous team that can “compete for the playoffs”, which is what the Fords want. But if Stafford goes down again, bringing out the tank and losing-out is the way to go. I said all last season that the Lions’ backup quarterback roulette was a blessing in disguise, and that there was no reason to be upset with their 0-9 finish to the season. Any wins the Lions would have salvaged down the stretch by having a high-quality backup QB (remember, they had six one-score losses in that stretch) would have been a net negative.
My ideal backup QB for the upcoming season is a late-round rookie or an undrafted free agent prospect. Someone who can come in and learn and develop behind Stafford while minimally impacting the salary cap. Daniel is the opposite of that. He is older than Stafford (33) and the Lions just locked him up for 3yrs/$13 million, not insignificant money.
To me, this signing has QuinnTricia job preservation written all over it. They seem more concerned with ensuring the bottom doesn’t fall out in the event of another Stafford injury in 2020, and I can’t say I wouldn’t take the same approach if I were in their shoes. But I’m not. I’m in my own shoes. British Knights, to be exact. So fly.
Theoretically, a season in the realm of seven wins could extend their shelf life, since that would technically keep them in “playoff contention” into December. Another three-to-six-win season would most definitely get them the axe. Daniel gives the team a better chance at treading water than would a developmental QB in the realm of Jeff Driskel or David Blough circa 2019.
Best case scenario is that we never have to see Daniel throw a pass in his Lions career. To sum up, the front office spent more money on a 33-year-old backup QB and a guy in Kearse who will start the season picking up trash along the service drive than they saved by cutting Kennard.
Reallocate those funds, please.
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