The Lions are building their first team since hiring General Manager Brad Holmes and head coach Dan Campbell last month and another new addition to the club shed some light on how that process may play out this offseason.
Chris Spielman joined the Lions as a special assistant to owner Sheila Ford Hamp and president Rod Wood, so he has been part of the team’s personnel meetings as they set the stage for the start of the new league year in March. Spielman didn’t divulge any details of those conversations during an appearance on 97.1 The Ticket Tuesday, but he gave a big-picture view of how he thinks the team should be built.
“I’m sure in free agency, in any philosophy, you can fill in voids in free agency, but you can’t buy a locker room,” Spielman said, via Justin Rogers of the Detroit News. “That’s been a philosophy for a lot of teams. Generally, what I believe, you want to build your team through the draft. It’s kinda draft, develop and re-sign. I think that’s hopefully the direction the Lions will take. Everybody understands that the most successful teams, usually, build through the draft, get your core nucleus of players and you try to re-sign those guys to a second contract.”
Wide receiver Kenny Golladay is at the top of the list of impending Lions free agents and would be an obvious target to hold onto if the team is going to follow the blueprint that Spielman laid down. They can use the franchise tag to help ensure he’s back as of Tuesday, but it remains to be seen just how Holmes is going to operate in his first run as a G.M.