Lions have an outside of the box opportunity to trade for a player they wanted in the 2025 NFL draft

Lions have an outside of the box opportunity to trade for a player they wanted in the 2025 NFL draft originally appeared on A to Z Sports.

Ahead of the 2025 NFL Draft, the Detroit Lions had a lot of players out for top 30 visits. One of the big ones was Texas A&M edge rusher Shemar Stewart. He was one of the first 30 visits the Lions had.

After the draft, Lions GM Brad Holmes talked about how the Lions tried multiple times to trade up in the draft for an edge rusher, but they could not find any partners willing to do a deal.

“I don’t need to get into specifics, but there were times we made attempts to get one, and you just – they got picked before, you couldn’t get up. It takes two to trade.”

It was my hunch at that time that Stewart was the guy the Lions were trying to move up to get for multiple reasons. He was the only edge rusher the Lions had in for a visit who got picked out of their range, and Stewart was picked in a range in which there were no trades for quite some time.

Now, here we are months later, and getting Stewart to Detroit is still a possibility if the Bengals, who are a notably stubborn team, are willing to do business.

Speaking of stubbornness, if you haven’t been paying attention to what’s happening with Stewart in Cincinnati, the Bengals are trying to hamstring him.

They want to sign him to an unprecedented deal that would allow the Bengals to void all future guarantees if Stewart were to have some sort of off-field issue. The problem is that Stewart has no issues regarding off-field issues. He’s not been arrested or suspended or anything.

Because of this dispute, Stewart left the Bengals’ minicamp early, and there have been concerns in Cincinnati that he may not show up to training camp. There have been other concerns that he might forgo this season with the Bengals and try to return to Texas A&M since he’s been training there, but those concerns have since cooled down.

So here’s where the Lions can come in and try to solve all of this by making a deal with the Bengals to get the edge rusher to Detroit. Here is the proposal they could make:

Lions get: Shemar Stewart
Bengals get: 2026 first-round pick

Yes, the Lions would have to give up a first-round pick, but what they get back is essentially a second first-round pick this year, and they also get a player who is expected to be a very good pro edge rusher with room to get even better. They get their man opposite Aidan Hutchinson, and that’s huge.

I talked with our Bengals reporter, John Sheeran, about his thoughts on the potential move and if he sees a possibility there. Here’s what he had to say:

“If Shemar Stewart would truly rather sit out an entire season of football and re-enter the 2026 NFL Draft instead of caving to the Bengals’ new default language, then a first-round pick in return is far from a bad deal. The problem, like it always is with players in Cincinnati, lies with leverage. Stewart essentially has none by design as an unsigned rookie. The club would rather this elongate to the start of the regular season, like they’ve done for so many past draft picks prior to the 2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement, than give him what he wants, or in this case, freedom from dealing with them ever again. They know they have the upper hand with him specifically, despite terrible optics and any detrimental effects it may have on the on-field product. They’ve never cared before, I doubt they’d care now. Power is power.”

Like we mentioned earlier, the Bengals are always going to get in their own way, and they’re what would hold this deal up, and they’re also the reason why the Lions never really had a shot with Trey Hendrickson. But the fact that they did allow Hendrickson to seek a trade, something they almost never do, shows that the Bengals might be more open to at least hearing offers for Stewart. If that’s the case, the Lions should be the ones talking to them.

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This story was originally reported by A to Z Sports on Jul 17, 2025, where it first appeared.

Lions have an outside of the box opportunity to trade for a player they wanted in the 2025 NFL draft

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