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Speaker 4: Hey, everyone. Jeff Risen here. It is your daily DLP. It is Tuesday, April 21. We are two days away. Two days to the twenty twenty six NFL draft in Pittsburgh. I am very excited. I am fired up for what will come for Detroit and for a lot of other teams too. As you know, this is my favorite week of the year, my favorite time of the year. I've I've been covering the draft for Real GM for over twenty years. This is a an a fun culmination point. This is a this is an interesting draft. It's very unpredictable going in two days from now. Nobody knows who's going in number two or three or four or five. Like, we have ideas, and that makes picking at 17 for the Detroit Lions very difficult, but we're gonna try to parse through what a lot of the experts and final mock drafts that have already been published out there are saying. And that's, that's our focus for today. Before we get into that, though, we we are doing a live mock draft tonight. Myself, Chris, Bischoff, Gray will all be there. Tentative kickoff time is 08:00 eastern. So, make sure you like and subscribe so you get notified when we're gonna be doing it, but that's that's the tentative schedule anyways. And I have cleared my my banks out, so I'm good. I will stay up late. I gotta get on my night schedule anyways with the draft coming up. I am normally somebody who goes to bed by about 09:30, because I'm up at five every day. And, yeah. So Thursday night, will will be a late one, but it's gonna be fun. So what are the top predictions for the lions so far at 17? There are two very clear front runners. Probably know who they are. Monroe Freeling and Caden Procter. Couple of SEC offensive tackles. They each have their pluses and minuses. I think I went over those, pretty well and pretty, I kept I kept the the analysis skinny in the rules of thumb that I posted this week. Check that out, at Detroit Lions podcast. I still do written content here quite a bit too. And that one is just like a basic primer for like, if you're if you don't know who these guys are and you wanna get a better feel, it's like the top pluses, the top minuses, and would they be available or not. And the the availability is such that, you know, we gotta we gotta bring up a couple of guys, who one could be unexpectedly available because of an injury, and the other one is probably I'm gonna say, I'm not gonna rule him out because you can't ever do that with Brad Holmes drafting, but it feels like it feels like the Jermoud McCoy situation is akin, if not more severe, than what happened with Will Johnson, coming out of Michigan. I remember he was one of the top cornerbacks in the draft, and he had a foot injury. Didn't play particularly well through it, but it caused him to drop. And it it it wasn't it wasn't ever remedied. And he wound up dropping into the second round of the Cardinals. And, you know, I I can see McCoy easily falling into the second with the news about his knee. The word degenerative is being thrown on thrown around a lot. Like, we we already know about this with Kirby. We've talked about this. If his knee is at Kobe Kirby Joseph level or worse, you shouldn't want anything to do with him, especially since he only really had one year of of strong play at Tennessee. His Oregon State year was was fine. It wasn't anything that would say, oh my god. I gotta have this guy in the NFL draft. So that I'm hopeful that, you know hey. Hey. If he's there at 50, I could be persuaded to like the lions taking him there. Still probably wouldn't be my favorite just because I have, like, as long time listeners and and readers of my my draft work over the years at the various outlets I've been at know, I have a particular aversion to chronic soft tissue injury players, and that's him. I I feel more strongly about them than most people do. Most draft analysts do. I have often a hard time reconciling, covering Brad Holmes, who seems to like getting the value of a guy who has injury issues. And, yeah. But the other one is Francis Mwanoa, and I don't think he's going to fall to 17. I I still think he's a top 10, top 12 pick. But the news about the back, he has a a version of a back injury that sounds incredibly similar to what Sam Laporta is going through, which is that it's you don't wanna downplay a back injury, but if you're gonna have one, like, this is the one to have. Like, it's not it's not, you know, a bloody herniated disc or anything like that. It's something that can be corrected with a minor surgery. It takes about three months of rehab, and but they they're not sure if Mau and O is gonna need that surgery or not, and that's gonna give some pause for some teams that are picking high, whether it's Arizona, Cleveland, Kansas City. Kansas City is probably out on that just because they drafted an an injured tackle a year ago, and they still don't know what they've gotten Josh Simmons, who, by the way, was one of the most mocked players to the Lions last year. Didn't work out that way. Took Talik Williams instead. One of the things that we're gonna do before the draft shows up, we're gonna go over all the the final mock drafts of the last few years and see where people were right about the lions and where they were wrong about the bigs. That will be, probably Thursday morning's show, actually. Because at that point, we're gonna be look. We're gonna be getting overkill on who they can pick and all that. Yeah. So

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Speaker 4: Freeling, Procter, the top candidates, top picks from from the various mock drafts. And there's there's been a lot of them who have finished already, including major ones like Mel, Dave Bruegler has has his final out. There's few other ones, you know, that that are that are done. I believe Todd McShea has his done. Daniel Jeremiah's, I think, drops today. He does also the top one fifty. And, just real quick, we'll go over the review of it. What we see as evaluators is different than what we're predicting to happen in the draft. I always give the example. You know? We knew we knew that the woman Manziel was going number two overall to the New York Jets even though he wasn't a top 50, top 100 player in that draft. Evaluation is different than projecting. Keep that in mind. The people who try to cross those lines, they tend to struggle on the prediction part or on the, evaluation part because they're it it it's a different discipline. It's a different art. It's, you know, like, it's both fruit, but, you know, one's a banana and one's a, you know, amolo. You know, it's just different. Freleng is I question if he's gonna be be available because the latest intel that I've gotten from my Cleveland people is that he will be the browns pick whether it's at six or nine or twelve. They are actively trying to trade back. Kansas City is at nine. They're looking to move up. They're not hiding that. Dallas, clearly looking to move up. Now the issue with Dallas is that they also have number 20, and they might want may they might want to, make it so like, you can offer 12 and a fourth round pick or a third round pick and something next year, or you can offer 20 and a second round pick. And it it's kinda up to Cleveland to see what they want and if that's the best deal that they can get. But they're actively trying to get back. And while there was a lot of buzz that they were gonna be on Procter for a while, It looks like Freeling would be their guy. Can't say for sure that it wouldn't be Carnell Tate, the Ohio State wide receiver, who the lines won't have interest in. Just not not that he's not a good player, but we're good at wide receiver. Have our top three already, really. Good. Realistically, we have our top five for 2026 already. Greg Dortch in there is a reserve slot punt returner taking least spot. Dominic Lovett coming up after being drafted late last year. We're good there. Tom Kennedy's back. Long live Tom Kennedy. Viva Tom Kennedy. You're number eight, I believe. So Freleng is the chances that he last 17, not great, but fair. Procter, I think, is maybe a little bit more likely, but there is a ton of late smoke coming out of Philadelphia that he is their guy. And we all know Howie Roseman, their GM, loves to move around to get his guy, whether it's up or back. Hefford, they see him as a guard, by the way, and not necessarily a tackle. Lions don't really need to draft a guard high. Wouldn't hurt to have another one in the mix, especially if they could play a little bit of center too, but it's it's not requisite. And, already, they've you could go to battle with with the left guard. The left guard battle this off season already. You know, you got Christian Mahogany, Juice Scruggs, Ben Barch, perhaps Miles Frasier. You're probably forgetting somebody. Like, there's there's dudes on the inside already. That tackle spot. If a team views Caden Proctor as a tackle, I could see them taking him earlier. The issue and, honestly, it's great for the line. It's great if you want Proctor in Detroit. There aren't a lot of teams that necessarily have offensive tackle as a massive priority or their top priority before the Lions pick. Cleveland could be one. Arizona could be one. Tampa Bay, not really. Dallas, they're they're tough to predict, obviously, but I wouldn't think so. You know? The the teams that are picking right the jets. Excuse me. Jets actually have a pretty good offensive line, believe it or not. It's the strength of their team. They are they are living proof that having a great offensive line doesn't make you have a great offense. You gotta have skilled players. Once had a great conversation with Lomas Brown about that. Love Lomas. I need to get Lomas on the show later this summer when during the off season. He's got some stories, man. So I think Procter is might maybe a little bit more likely to be available to the lions at 17 than Freleng. Blake Miller, not getting a lot of run. And I wanna bring this up, and this is from ESPN and their simulator and their data. And they track this pretty well, and I will throw it up here. This is what their simulator data tells you the fans are doing at number 17. And the number one pick is Caden Proctor, who is on 29% of the fan picks in their draft. Frieling is at 21%. Venga Iowane, 14%. Akeem Mesador, 13%. Then you drop way down. You know, Spencer Fano, 4.1%. Lumu, under four. TJ Parker, under four. That's, pretty significant lean towards the offensive line.

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Speaker 4: A lot of people think that's gonna be Procter or Freleng. I will scroll down a little bit on this bad boy. I gotta go to the other screen here. This is where it gets more interesting because now you've got down here. Shows up. Keldrick Falk, who I think is still a very realistic possibility at at seventeen. Although, I'd the more I hear, the more I'm doubtful that he will be there. And he could very well be Dallas' pick at twelve if they stick at twelve. He could certainly be Tampa Bay's pick at fifteen. Jets could jets could want him. The, the Chiefs could want him. He imagine him with Chris Jones, who's Chris Jones is one of his upward comps. He's he is he is that kind of a guy. Like, again, he doesn't have that explosiveness, but there's a lot of people that really like Kendrick Falk, and I still very strongly suspect that a lot of them are in Allen Park. But I don't know if he's gonna be the pick. You know, you see Dylan Tieneman there. McCoy falling. He's actually rising, though, in their listing, which is interesting to me. Blake Miller, who I think is a very, very, very strong candidate to be the Lions pick at 17, is way down here. He is thirteenth in the rankings at just at 1%. It's basically the same as Tieneman, a little bit more than Makai Lemmon. Makai Lemmon is eminently redundant with Amun Ra Saint Brown, though I do think he compares more to Golden Tate than he does to Amman Rast Saint Brown. Because he played at USC, because Saint went there, like and they they played the same way. I get it. But, stylistically, he is more of a Golden Tate guy than a Amman Rast Saint Brown guy. But either way, good good football player. Lions don't need that, unfortunately. Well, fortunately, we're good there. And you see, you know, Jordan Tyson, Emmanuel McNeil Warren. But that's, you know, that's the top picks based on the ESPN fan simulator. Now that is admittedly not the most popular fan simulator. I think takes the cake there. I have been using PFSN. They all have their pluses and minuses. Yeah. My final mock draft, which will publish tomorrow on Wednesday. Be straight. I haven't completely decided yet. But if I have Monroe Freeling there, he will be my pick. If he's not, it's gonna be a difficult decision for me on whether I think the lions would take Blake Miller, Caden Proctor, or Keldrick Falk. And I don't know which way to lean on that. I'd I'd love to tell you that I know. I'd be lying. I don't like lying. Wise man once told me, you know, if you if you never tell a lie, you don't have to worry about remembering which lie you told to which person. If you tell the truth, you're good. It's the same every time. I'd love to tell you that the lines aren't gonna take Aidan Parker. They're not gonna take Blake Miller. They're or they are gonna take Keldrick Falk. They're gonna shock the world and take Vega Iowanae. Like, no. I don't know. I will say I'm not sold on Iowanae as being this great prospect. He's Larry Warford to me. Warford was a good player, made one Pro Bowl. Never had the lateral range in his pass protection to be totally reliable, though. Better run blocker than pass blocker, which is what Alana is. And he like, if you watch his Penn State tape, he doesn't get one more than one gap quickly to his to either side. Now when he gets there, he's freaking devastating. I almost want Procter more as a left guard than I would I wanna. And I would say for Detroit, I'd prefer Chase Besantis in the second round if you're gonna go interior line, or, you know, you go later in the draft. But that's a conversation for another time. Keep this one pretty tight since we, we do have a a live show coming, and a lot of draft content. I understand. So, time is tight for everyone. I appreciate you spending your time with me on this Tuesday, the day before the day before the draft. Can't wait, man. I'm excited. I'm fired up for this draft. Let's go. No matter what happens, we're gonna try to find our way through and see the light that the lions see. And, also, if we don't see it, we're gonna shed a little shade on that light and what might be look. It's only fair to bring up the best case scenario and the worst case scenario. And, generally, you know, somewhere in between the wrong and right is where we we come to the agreement. It's what we do. Jeff Riston signing out. Be good to one another, everybody.