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Speaker 2: Hey, everyone. Jeff Risen here with your daily DLP. It is Saturday, April 25. The twenty twenty six NFL draft just ended. Came to a merciful conclusion today. Normally, day three is my favorite day of the year. My favorite day of the draft, just watching all the prospects and everything. But this year, because so many of these guys that were drafted by Detroit and elsewhere, probably aren't gonna make the team in wherever they are, and that's not necessarily an indictment of the players themselves. It's it's more about, like, the draft class as a whole. And there's lost a little bit of excitement today. Well, let's talk about what the lions got today, what they didn't get today. First pick of the day, most people know this guy. Jimmy Rolder, linebacker, Michigan Wolverines. Took him out at number one eighteen after they had traded one twenty eight yesterday, as part of the Derek Moore deal to land Derek Moore. Still love that pick. Really good pick. Love that fit. Roeder, I didn't think was gonna go this early. He was my I believe he was my number one seventy seven overall player, and I say that from watching him. I've actually seen him play in person three times, once in 2024 and twice in 2025. He didn't start in 2024. He did wind up playing a lot at the game I was at as a Fresno State game. And, well, that was, like, mop up duty. So it wasn't, like, super intense football or anything. But, what I like about him, he is a lot like Malcolm Rodriguez in that he is at his best in the box, stacking and shedding. Well, he doesn't shed very well, but it's at least stacking the blocks and strafing along and attacking the run downhill. He's pretty good at getting around a tight end if he wants to. Fantastic form tackler. I'll think back to 1984, Custer Baker Middle School. Not even there anymore. Where I where I went to middle school. My seventh grade football coach. God, what was his name? I don't even remember his name now. That's sad. His last name was Dorsey, and he was trying to teach me to be a linebacker. And I was a scrawny little kid. I wasn't little, but I was scrawny. And he always I remember exactly what he said. Your shoulder pad goes into the navel, and your head looks up at his shoulder. That has stuck with me for over, god, forty years. Good lord. And, I still look for that when I watch it. And I've heard, like, variations on that, like, throughout the years from a lot of very well educated, very experienced football people. That's Jimmy Rolder, exceptional form tackler. He's gonna snuff out the run. He can he has enough speed and get to it, acceleration that he can make a play on a screen pass. He can blow blow up a bubble screen. He can get outside, if the run isn't super well blocked. He can get outside and make a play at the sideline. My concerns with Roeder, number one is coverage. He doesn't trust his eyes. And maybe that will come with more experience because this is a guy who only started one year at Michigan, and they did play a very vanilla y zone at Michigan. Hopefully, he gets a little bit better at that, but there's a lot of times where you see him and it looks like like, oh, I'm gonna go over here and then he doesn't and then the play goes there and then he has to to race into it. So maybe that's why I said, and I put it on social media, there is upside with him in coverage. He's got to learn to get off blocks better. And my basic consensus from him, and this was in my notes for him, for Jimmy Relder, was when his defensive lineman played well in front of him, he was really damn good. And when they weren't, you don't notice that he's on the field so much. So this is a pick and and by the way, Jack Campbell is so much better when DJ Reader and Ty Lake Williams and Ali McNeil at all are playing better in front of him. Most linebackers are. The trick for Roeder and one of the reasons why he fell to the fourth round, and he did have pretty good tackle numbers. Aside from the coverage, one of the reasons why he fell was because he is somewhat more dependent on the defensive line keeping him free and unencumbered from blocks. At least that was my take on watching his film and watching him in person. He is immediately direct competition and or replacement, or backup to Malcolm Rodriguez, who's back on a one year deal, which is fine, but that's how you build depth. May the best man win. He does have some special teams experience, which, you know, puts him in the Damon Clark bucket. We're good with that. They need that guy. I like this pick. They took him earlier than I would've liked. I would've liked him to come in their next pick, But if they didn't think that he was gonna be there and that was their guy, I'm good with that. Same thing with Derek Moore last night. They traded up to get him at 44 and, like, one of the reasons why they traded up was because they were convinced whether it's true or not doesn't even matter, but they were convinced that Baltimore was going to take Derek Moore with his old Michigan defensive coordinator, Jesse Minter, as our head coach at 45. That is a plausible fear. That was their guy. They went and got him. I love it. Get aggressive. Go get your guy. Show him your show him that he's your guy. I like that. Don't worry about the draft trade value much. It's just and and there's so many different variations of it. Yeah. That's not not something to worry about at all. It's a good deal. If you get the player, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. They got their player. I think Derrick Moore is gonna be a win. The next pick of the night is my favorite one, and that's Keith Abney. One fifty seven overall, Arizona State defensive back. He will remind you a great deal of Amic Robertson. Dude, his

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Speaker 2: Undersized outside corner who plays like he he hits like a safety. He tackles like a safety, but you wonder where the lion's vision is for him. Because I I'll go back to when Amik was with the Raiders as a, I think he was a fifth round pick, fourth or fifth round pick. And they're like, well, he's five seven, five seven and a half, five eight. We've got to play him in the slot. And he'd never played in the slot when he was at Louisiana. I think he played outside. Well, that's probably what's gonna happen in this case too. And I do worry a little bit about that if that's, with Abney because, he his game and his style of play says he's an outside guy. Now they did ask Brad about this a little bit, and I wanna pull

Speaker 4: up the quote here. I'm gonna read from

Speaker 2: the the line sent out a quote sheet to the media, afterwards. And where's it at here? He said, I've evaluated, Abney multiple times throughout this process dating back to last fall. And every time every single time, I always enjoyed he's talking about him in being the context of his football player, being a football player, which is also what he said about Rollegger. When Brad Holmes says, that's a football player, that's very high praise. I agree with him on that. Said I think he might be I think he might tilt a little bit more towards nickel at this level, but I think he could play outside for sure. He's another instinctive guy that can find the football. He could trigger. He can tackle. He's pretty sticky. So that's sort of ambiguous on how they're gonna use him. I think some of this is dependent on what's going on within a straight straw. Will he be healthy? Will he be competing at outside or inside? How quickly does Roger McCreery fit? Is he your slot? What are you gonna do with Christian Isian, Avonte Maddox, who both can play the slot? They can also both play safety. And they've got some options there. Adney was my number 56 overall player. They got him at one fifty seven. Believe he was number 61 on Dane Brugler's in the beast. There were a lot of draft nicks, a lot of draft analysts who really liked this pick and had Abney valued much higher than he went. Why did he fall? Some of it is the size. Again, he is and this this goes into where it might be a misperception that he does have to fight against. He's an undersized outside corner who doesn't have great long speed. He's gonna need help over the top with the faster receivers. He's pretty crafty in shading them and disrupting their timing. But if he gets beat off the line, he does not have the makeup speed. He will make you worry about that. And that's that's enough to make him fall to where he got in with the Lions, but this is honestly, of all the guys, he has the clearest path of any of the day three guys to being on the field in playing time in the regular season. And that's nothing against Roeder, but Roeder is going to have to beat out a couple of guys to get into that spot. He's probably fighting with Governor Nowaski to be a special seamer who is active on game day as a reserve linebacker. That's probably where he's at, entering anyways. I think he can always play his way up. But for Abner Abney. Sorry. Abney. He's got a shot to win the nickel job if he can play outside, if that makes any sense. Because what it would be, Terion can flip inside. If Abney can show it all that he can handle his business inside, but he's also not his size and lack of top end speed isn't a detriment on the outside. He's got a real shot to win a job over Ennis Rake Straw and maybe push Rock Yes in for that number four corner match up. We'll see. We'll see how it plays out. That's my initial takeaway on it. I like that pick a lot, and I have a feeling that most people did and do. Then the next pick, and do. Then the next pick is number one sixty one. They traded up for Kentucky wide receiver, Kendrick Law. I'll be straight up. I'm aware of who he is. I watched him when he was in Alabama. Didn't watch him enough to grade him this year. I'd love to tell you that I I know a lot about him, but this this is one of my homework assignments for when I get back home, be home Monday and watching him. I'll be watching some Kentucky film. I got I got a nice little archive of it. Used it to watch some Jagger Burton and Jamila Farmer. A lot of lot of lot of Kentucky players. What I know about him from his time at Alabama, he blocks his ass off. That's that's literally the only notes I have on him because they didn't throw him the ball much. Didn't catch a lot of Kentucky either. Just looking at his statistical profile. Now, Kentucky's offense is different. It's not It does translate to the NFL, but I I need to see more before I I pass any judgment on this one. Now they traded up to get them. They traded one eighty one and two thirteen. And I am one of those people that likes to track what happened with the picks that you traded away. So just just in humoring myself on this, number one eighty one became Penn State defensive tackle Zane Durant, who I had heard, and I know a couple other people had heard, is probably gonna play in Canada. He is a Canadian national, and will be a high draft pick in the CFL, if he hasn't been already. I don't I'm not sure exactly when the draft is, but that was the word on him anyways, but he's decent player. Number two thirteen was Iowa defensive tackle, Vandenberg. I'm not sure that the lines had a lot of interest in him. He was my number 298 player, so I'm not really gonna lose any sleep over somebody else taking him at two thirteen. But and and by the way, in this draft, I would have been happy if they only took Rolder and after ABNY today, honestly. I mean, because after ABNY, again, these guys are fighting to beat out somebody else that they either signed this off season as a low budget deal or a draft pick from last year or something like that to try and make the roster because it's it's gonna be difficult for this. It's gonna be an uphill swim, upstream swim, uphill climb. Mixing your metaphors there. It happens. Guys, I'm so tired. But we're gonna slog through this. Next up, I like this one. If you watch Texas Tech, they were a very odd team in that they are a defensive oriented team in the big 12. They that's some offense too, but if you were watching Jacob Rodriguez, if you were watching Cole Wisniewski, you might have seen Skather Gill Howard in front of them. He wasn't the best player on that defense, but he was the leader. He was the heart and soul. Gives you everything he's got on every freaking snap. One Gap guy needs needs to win off the snap. Not gonna be a guy who's gonna anchor all that well against the run. He's he's undersized for for being that. But this is a guy that you want in your locker room. Not sure how he's gonna fit, quite honestly, especially since they also drafted Tyree West later at 02/22. He was their last pick. And he is an odd size as well. They And I'll be straight. I'm actually in Tennessee, like right by where West played. And I do have like, some working knowledge. I I did not grade him either. I do have a working knowledge of who he was and what he did. He was he is a lot like MacKay Wingo in that he is a, it's gonna be it's it's difficult to project guys who are two hundred and eighty pounds, who aren't quick off the snap where they play in the NFL. Because if you're gonna be that heavy and play outside, you've got to either just blast through dudes, you know, be able to to, you know, shock a tight end off the tackle and bend just a little bit to get to the quarterback. He doesn't do that. He is good against the run. He will set an edge, but his best work comes inside. Well, inside, you're not you're not playing at a tight hips too squatty, two hundred and eighty, two hundred and eighty five pounds. Like, that's it's a misfit size, and it's unfortunate. Now I will say, drafting these two both does give me some, does lend some credence to the idea that the Lions might be switching to more of a five man front look at times. And we've talked about this a lot. I want I do wanna see more of that because I think it suits their their top defensive tackles, being Tylik Williams and and Ali McNeal. I think it suits them very well. I also think it's a great way to control the line of scrimmage and keep guys like Jack Campbell and Derek Barnes, your two primary linebackers, keep them clean, let them clean everything up. Campbell was an All Pro last year doing that. Barnes was at his best in the NFL, has been when he can work off a guy who can hold a block in front of him and knife on either side and attack the run downhill. That's that's where those guys are at their best. So I wonder if that is going to be part of the plan, if they're gonna tweak the defense that way. And we'll we'll find out about that. But these last guys, they're fighting to maybe make the roster. Just as last year, we saw Wingo, Hassaneen, who we probably should talk about more as a potential edge. We don't really know what we've got there because he was injured. We did watch him in training camp in the preseason, and he's incredible effort. He loved to see the guy work. I mean, his work ethic's unquestionable, undeniable, but he isn't a very effective football player consistently yet. So all these guys are gonna be competing for those same one, two, three reserve active roster game day spots. The guys who don't like that are gonna be on the practice squad. And that's that's where they're at drafting late. That's one of the reasons why I'm so bullish on this team is because their roster has a lot of very good depth. Now, I'd prefer not to test it as much as we have in recent times. No doubt about that. The glaring omission here. Well, there are two. They did not take a running back, which doesn't surprise me a lot. It was a running back class where, and Chris and I talked about this in our show last night, the guy that you could take at 161, if you were trading up for a running back there, isn't markedly different than a guy that you can sign right now. And I'm recording this, it is 07:58PM. The draft ended about, what, half an hour ago. And there are a lot of undrafted running backs who probably have an argument to be just as good as the guys that they signed. Curtis, my guy, Curtis Allen from Virginia Uni would be one of them. I'm good with that. You don't need to spend resources on that running back if they're not special. And they deemed that it wasn't, so I'm good with that one. Now, Brad actually got asked about this one. I wanna read the quote, because he was asked if the lion's not taking a safety should engender any confidence in the health status of one Brian Branch and Kirby Joseph. And let me find the quote here, and I'm gonna read it for you Because this is a very good question. It's one that I was hoping would get asked. And here it is. So the question is surmised as, on if not drafting any safety says anything about the confidence in Kirby Joseph and Brian Branch, Brad said, yeah. It wasn't about it wasn't that we, intentionally didn't draft, a safety because we feel good about them. I feel like they're both sorry, I'm scrolling through this. They're both trending in the right direction, but it just didn't line up. Just like it hasn't lined up at other positions in the past. We didn't ignore it. There were some good ones that were out there that, just got picked before we were able to, but it didn't quite line up. I didn't really think that the the class was that deep either, so it had to line up and you had to strike right. And that's, that's what it's at. And then he followed up. There was a follow-up question about their statuses, and he said, yeah. Like I said, I think they're both headed in the right direction, and that was the end of the safety talk. And I will tell you, every pick they made today, my best player available was a safety. It was different ones. So Brad saw the class different than I did, which is fine. They do have depth of safety right now. I I I do think that we have collectively as Lions fans and probably as Lions media not talked enough. They do have Chuck Clark. They do have Christian Issey. Thomas Harper's back. Tom Harper was not bad at all last year. He's not Kirby or Branch, but he's a capable starting safety in the NFL and showed it last year. Not gonna be a pro bowler. He can play. They do have Dan Jackson. We'll see what they've got in that. They're they're they have options there with Maddox coming back. I like Izzy in a lot. I think that was one of the more underappreciated free agent signings, not just in Detroit, but around the league. I'm very excited about that. But I would have tapped into that safety market instead of taking defensive linemen that don't have a clear role in the NFL, at least not Again, they've already got Makai Wingo, who has he was a healthy scratch because he doesn't have a position. Josh Paschal, even when he was healthy, he kind of struggled to find because he was heavy. He was much more of an edge than an inside guy, but he wasn't quick as a big edge. And so that made him play inside more and didn't really work out for him all that well when he was healthy. He's not with us anymore. They haven't they like that kind of guy clearly, and I hope it works for him, but I there were players out there that I would have taken instead. And we'll talk more about those Sunday show, Monday show as we get into it. I do wanna, like, see where the dust settles a little bit in the undrafted free agent market. Thus far, I've only seen one, and it's not confirmed. It was an agent tweeting out that that his client was going to sign with the Lions. We'll see. There'll be time to sort through all those. And frankly, there isn't a lot of space for those guys except that running back. They also did not take a quarterback. They right now have Jared Goff backed up by a guy who coached high school football last year, and that's it. Thinking they're adding somebody there, whether it's a undrafted rookie, whether they're waiting for the UFL season to end, which honestly isn't a terrible idea to get a guy, whatever. But they didn't take one. You see Ethan Kalyak Manas did get drafted right after the Lions made their last pick. Good for him. Didn't necessarily want him in Detroit, but there were names that were out there for that. Wanna know what y'all thought about the draft? Leave it in the comments. If you're what if you're getting to this from my Facebook page, Jeff Rizzo Lions NFL, leave the comment there. We appreciate it. Like and follow along there so you know when I'm publishing from here. When daily comes out, you'll also get all my work from Real GM and various other places where I, hang my professional hat. Got a lot of lot of fun content coming, wrapping up the draft, seeing what's going on for the season, previewing the seasons, talking a little bit of odds, stuff like that. It's fun. Very happy to be back at Real GM. I missed it. I missed doing the 10¢, 5¢. We'll have some of those this week too. We are gonna talk with a couple of different guests throughout this coming week. I know doctor Jimmy Liao is gonna come on and talk about the health of the the health statuses of the, the draft class. So, look forward to that, and, we'll have a couple of people that, we have talked with in the past who are gonna come on and, you know, they previewed the draft, now they will review the draft. And one of the issues I have in the coming week is I'm also doing that as a guest with, like, 10 different things. So my time will be weird this week, so make sure you're liking and subscribing because these are not going to come at a standard time. I don't know when they're gonna get recorded, to be frank. Anyways, I hope y'all are happy with the lions. I don't do draft grades, but and mine would be if I did one, it would be weighted very heavily towards the first two, maybe three, four picks. Like what they got. Happy. Happy with what they got. Definitely. It's a good weekend. I'll let y'all have back at it. Enjoy the rest of the weekend. Go lions. Jeff Risen signing out. Be good to one another, everybody.