fit in with the staff<\/a>,\u201d Holmes told Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press. \u201cKnew some people on the staff already, but look, it\u2019s his offense. It\u2019s not something where he\u2019s got to do something else or be like \u2014 this is his show, man. So we just felt like it was the best fit for us.\u201d<\/p>\nHolmes noted that Petzing did an \u201cimpressive\u201d job with the Cardinals, particularly with the numerous injury issues the team experienced over the last year. Also in 2023 and 2024, the Cardinals finished with top 10 rushing offenses.<\/p>\n
How different will the Lions look in 2026?<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, look, it\u2019s his offense,\u201d Holmes said. \u201cAnd a lot of it is, what I liked about him is that it\u2019s not a system. \u2026 It\u2019s what you do you have, what\u2019s the personnel that you have? Like, what can we do? And so that\u2019s what I think he showed us in that process is that he can maximize personnel of what\u2019s available. So that\u2019s real exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Plus, the Lions were able to hire Mike Kafka for a high-ranking offensive assistant role. Holmes noted Kafka\u2019s specific title will be worked out later.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were really high on Kafka, too, in the process and so to be able to get that one, too, I was just like, \u2018Holy cow,\u2019\u201d Holmes said. \u201cSo, very, very happy.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut [Petzing is] just very sharp, very bright, just really liked his attention to detail. He was very well recommended, all the vetting that we did. I mean, all the sources couldn\u2019t speak highly enough about him, and just kind of just really liked what his philosophy was behind the offensive football and how he utilized personnel. So, it just, he just checked all the boxes, man. So we were we were excited about him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After taking a step back in 2025 and missing the postseason, the Lions have a new direction on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-437515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}