Pride of Detroit
Earlier this week, we broke down the nine biggest winners from Detroit Lions OTAs and minicamp. Unfortunately, everyone can’t be winners.
The following list of six players who I believe saw their stock fall over the past month are far from in trouble. There’s relatively little on the line in the spring, but for various reasons–amount of reps, what coaches are saying, competition at the position, or injury–my expectations for these players have slightly dropped.
Again, I want to retirate that we’re talking very low stakes in the spring, but I don’t think any of these people helped their case.
Let’s get one thing clear here: the Lions absolutely value Vaki as a four-core special teamer. I would be absolutely shocked if he doesn’t make the team. He continues to rep with first-team special teams units, and holds the valuable personal protector position on punt coverage. Detroit views him as one of the best special teams players on the roster, if not the entire league.
However, Lions coach Dan Campbell was pretty blunt when it comes to where Vaki stands as a running back after two injury-filled seasons.
“The running back position is a little raw. Yes, he has been in there, he did a little bit in college, this is year three, but he hasn’t played running back, not that much, and a lot of it is injury,” Campbell said.
Unless Vaki can prove himself more polished at running back, Detroit may be forced to keep a fourth running back like Jacob Saylors to provide a little more insurance behind the Lions’ top two backs.
Nothing Frazier did this spring caused his stock to drop, but I did find it quite surprising that he didn’t have much of any reps with the first-team offense. Christian Mahogany held down that left guard position for nearly all of OTAs and minicamp. And when it wasn’t him, it was Juice Scruggs.
And while Campbell said the left guard position is wide open, he sounded more excited about the chance to throw Ben Bartch into the competition when healthy, leaving Frazier as a pretty big underdog to win a starting spot, in my opinion.
No one stood to benefit from the unfortunate ACL tear of Kendrick Law more than Dominic Lovett, but the second-year receiver continued to struggle in practice. Drops remain a pretty significant problem for Lovett. And on top of that, he hasn’t established himself as a special teamer yet. He’s rarely repping with the returners, and still has a ton to prove as a gunner. During one particular set of special teams drill, Lovett was repping as the third-team gunner alongside UDFA De’Shawn Rucker–behind Khalil Dorsey, Rock Ya-Sin, Ennis Rakestraw, and Nick Whiteside.
Again let me preface this by saying nothing Hassanein has done this offseason can be attributed to this decline in stock. Rather, he’s been widely praised for putting in the work...
