Detroit Lions general manager Brad Holmes feels pretty good about the depth he’s built along his defensive line, especially inside at defensive tackle, through free agency so far.<\/p>\n
Detroit returns starters Alim McNeill<\/a> and DJ Reader<\/a>, but McNeill might not be ready for the start of the season after tearing his ACL in December. The team re-signed Levi Onwuzurike<\/a> and Pat O’Connor, retained Josh Paschal<\/a> and Mekhi Wingo, and signed veteran Roy Lopez<\/a> in free agency.<\/p>\n “Really excited about our depth and what we were able to acquire on the D-line,” Holmes said.<\/p>\n That doesn’t mean Holmes won’t look to add some more young talent via a very strong interior defensive line group in this year’s NFL Draft. There’s a number of players along the interior of Detroit’s defensive front who are signed only through the 2025 season.<\/p>\n Defensive tackle class draft strength: Talent and depth. It’s a loaded class of interior defenders with some draft analysts thinking it’s the deepest group in maybe a decade. There’s not only high-end talent that includes potential Top 10 pick Mason Graham, but depth that will bleed well into Day 2 with teams being able to find quality starters into Friday night.<\/p>\n Lions defensive tackle depth chart: McNeill, Reader, Onwuzurike, Paschal, Lopez, Wingo, O’Connor, Chris Smith, Myles Adams, Brodric Martin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Detroit Lions general manager Brad Holmes feels pretty good about the depth he’s built along his defensive line,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2071],"tags":[146,113,2506,7,416,147,5515,415,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-25398","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-lions","8":"tag-detroit","9":"tag-detroit-lions","10":"tag-detroitlions","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-homepage-centerpiece-package","13":"tag-lions","14":"tag-news-road-to-the-draft-yoy","15":"tag-news-twentyman","16":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114454710957571021","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}