While 275,000 people partied in Downtown Detroit, Brad Holmes couldn’t believe what he saw in the war room at Allen Park.
The Lions needed a cornerback above all else. The problem is that just a few of those men received first-round grades. Sitting at No. 29, they assumed they had little chance of connecting with a cornerback they liked and expected to have to wait until Day 2.
The problem, of course, is cornerbacks like that are usually long gone by No. 29. Each of the last 15 cornerback classes produced at least one top-20 pick. So the Lions naturally believed Arnold was never a realistic possibility for them.
Then one pick after another after another was spent on the offensive side of the ball — 14 in a row, doubling the previous record — and Holmes began making calls about a trade up in the late teens. Then Mitchell went to Philadelphia at No. 22, and Holmes pulled the trigger with Dallas two picks later, filling his biggest need with his favorite player as the streets of Detroit shook with excitement.
“It doesn’t always match up that way,” Holmes said. “I know you guys have heard me say a million times we don’t care what the position is, we just want to get the best football player, but it happened to match up with it’s the best football player and it was an area where we wanted to add one at some point. We didn’t know if we were going to be able to add one in the first round, and to be honest we weren’t really anticipating being able to add one in the first round. So, we just kind of thought we would be out of the mix for a lot of those guys, especially him. Especially him because he was our highest-rated corner.”
With that, the Lions have dramatically changed their trajectory in the secondary. Rather than acquiring a developmental piece to fill in behind Davis and Robertson, Detroit has a bonafide CB1 to build around for the long term. He should compete for a starting job right away, and has the versatility to move into the slot too, opening up even more possibilities for Aaron Glenn’s defense.
Simply ask him. He will inform you.
“I’m a shut-down corner,” Arnold said on a video call following the choice. “I’m coming in to keep the WR1s off the rip. I felt like I was already coming in with a chip on my shoulder because of the draft and how things were happening. Furthermore, Brad traded up to obtain me, which is really important to me. So I’m going to go out there and demonstrate why he did it.”
