Detroit Lions among NFL’s best for draft pick retention
By Zac Snyder
Not every draft has been a home run for the Detroit Lions, but they have actually done a very good job retaining the players they’ve picked.
The NFL Draft is the lifeblood of a healthy franchise. Free agency is great for patching long-term holes, but it takes a history of good drafting to build a stable franchise with depth and ability.
Conventional thinking might peg the Detroit Lions as somewhere between poor and average for their drafts over the last five years, but that thinking turns out to be challenged by data compiled by Jeff Hunter of Buffalo Rumblings.
Hunter went back through the past six drafts to figure out how many of the picks remain with the team. The Lions’ disastrous 2011 draft shows up as a major blemish, but the Lions actually come out as one of the league’s best teams for retaining their draft picks.
53.2% ranks second-best in the entire league for the five year period between 2011 and 2016, behind only the Cincinnati Bengals.
League average numbers aren’t presented, but the color coding makes for a handy eyeball test. The more green a cell appears, the better. The more red, the worse. With that, we see even the Lions’ number of 23.2 for the three-year period from 2011-2013, which is weighed down but the goose egg for 2011, shows up in a light shade of green.
Even late in Martin Mayhew’s tenure, the Lions were hitting on draft picks at least on an average level. Now more than a year after a change in the front office, a good number of players drafted under Mayhew’s eye remain part of the team.
The early news on Bob Quinn-run drafts is good as well with a 100% number for his first draft. That’s particularly remarkable considering the size of the draft class. Ten players were drafted by the Lions in the 2016 NFL Draft and all ten remain with the team this offseason.
While the high retention rate is good news for now, it could be said we’d actually like to see this number trend down. That would speak to an even greater overall depth and quality of the roster, making it harder and harder for late-round picks to make the team. That’s evident in the relatively low numbers for the New England Patriots. As a perennial contender, the Patriots have a stacked roster that can be hard to crack for a young player.
Next: 30 Best Draft Picks in Detroit Lions History
Hopefully the Lions get to that point. For now, consider it good news the Lions are keeping players they draft at a high rate.