Detroit Lions predictive seven round mock draft

The Detroit Lions are now a week into free agency. There are still holes that the team needs to fill through the draft. Here is what I think they will do at next month’s draft to fill them.

One week into the free agency period, the Lions still have a few needs. Their offensive line group needs interior help. General manager Bob Quinn will likely be adding to the running back group. The Lions made some signings during the first week of free agency, but they followed Quinn’s standard operating procedure. Quinn has established that he will be going into the draft with players that you suspect you can live with going into the season as starters. He will augment those players with his draft picks.

Last year’s additions of corner D.J. Hayden, defensive tackle Akeem Spence, and Linebacker Paul Worrilow fit this bill. All of them had starting experience elsewhere and made it unnecessary for the Lions to address a major need in the draft. Each kept the Lions from giving playing time to a player that was not ready. The Lions were not committed to any of those players long term. Worrilow is a free agent again. Washington and Spence are among the Lions better options if they needed to clear some salary cap space.

On one hand that makes doing a mock draft for the team easy, there are a dozen players the Lions need for each and every draft pick so few picks are truly awful ideas. On the other hand, it is maddening because there is no obvious answer at any pick. The Lions could take anyone.

There are a few different ways to do mock drafts. One would be to tell you what I would do. I suspect that you don’t really care what I would do, however. Another method is to run through a scenario based draft, sort of a “what if?” Zac already does those here so I am not going to take that route either.

Instead, I will try to do the impossible. I am going to try to predict the draft picks that the team will actually make. I reserve the right to do one more of these, in the lead up to the draft. Here is my best guess at what the Lions will actually do in the 2018 NFL draft. If you are more interested in the names than the analysis, click next to page seven to see the list at the end of the article.