Just about every time Detroit Lions general manager Brad Holmes has talked to the media, he\u2019s been asked about the health of the safety room\u2014and for good reason. There remains a lot of uncertainty and mystery around a knee injury that held Kerby Joseph out for the majority of last season. And fans are eager to hear updates on Brian Branch\u2019s recovery after the Pro Bowl safety suffered an Achilles tear in early December.<\/p>\n
Holmes gave a somewhat optimistic overview of both safeties during his final press conference of NFL Draft weekend. He noted that both players are \u201ctrending in the right direction,\u201d but he left it at that.<\/p>\n
The Lions did not draft a safety during this year\u2019s draft, and some have taken that as a vote of confidence in both Branch and Joseph. However, Holmes rejected that claim. Instead, things just didn\u2019t line up in this year\u2019s draft to take any safety they wanted.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t that we intentionally didn\u2019t draft a safety because we feel good about them [Joseph and Branch]. I feel like they\u2019re both trending in the right direction, but it just didn\u2019t line up,\u201d Holmes said. \u201cJust like it hasn\u2019t lined up at other positions in the past, we didn\u2019t ignore it. There were some good ones that were out there that just got picked before we were able to, but it just didn\u2019t quite line up. I didn\u2019t really think that class was as deep either, so it had to line up and you had to strike right.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s obviously a bit of mixed news when it comes to Branch and Joseph, but the positive spin is that the Lions were active in free agency to build out the depth behind their two starters. They were able to add veteran Chuck Clark, sign versatile defensive back Christian Izien, and re-sign last year\u2019s primary backup, Avonte Maddox. Combine that with capable depth in Thomas Harper and last year\u2019s draft pick Dan Jackson, and the Lions may be able to weather the storm in 2026, even if the outlook is questionable beyond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just about every time Detroit Lions general manager Brad Holmes has talked to the media, he\u2019s been asked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":608413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[264323,4992,4993,349,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-608412","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-detroit-lions-injuries","9":"tag-detroit-lions-news","10":"tag-detroit-lions-quotes","11":"tag-nfl","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608412","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=608412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}