Earlier this week the NFL revealed the compensatory picks for the 2020 NFL Draft. As expected, the Detroit Lions did not get any comp picks. When teams spend more in free agency than what the departing free agents from the team earn on the open market, there is no compensation balance needed.
Even when the Lions have received comp picks in the past, they’ve not come anywhere close to as valuable as the free agents who left Detroit.
Take the last time the Lions received comp picks, 2016. In return for Ndamukong Suh signing with Miami and Nick Fairley moving to New Orleans as free agents, the Lions got the No. 95 pick and the No. 210 pick in the 2016 NFL Draft. The first pick became Graham Glasgow, the second Jimmy Landes.
Those are the only comp picks of the Bob Quinn era, where signing free agents from other teams has dramatically outpaced what ex-Lions have immediately received on the free agent market.
Glasgow emerged as a quality starter on the offensive interior, but that’s not an impact position like Suh. Granted Suh wound up being radically overpaid by Miami and the Dolphins are still paying the price for that, but Ndamukong Suh is more important to a team than Graham Glasgow. Anyone who argues otherwise will gladly buy your oceanfront property in Oklahoma.
Glasgow might be the most successful comp pick in Lions history, which dates back to the origins of the compensatory pick system in the 1990s. Cornerback Nevin Lawson (2014) and DE Devin Taylor (2013) are the only other players drafted by the Lions with comp picks that ever started a game for the team.
Far more of the Lions comp pick history resembles the Jimmy Landes experience. Landes, a long snapper from Baylor, never played a down for the Lions. That’s true for more than half the players on the list below, courtesy Draft History:
None of the first six players, all taken in the 1990s when the franchise was a regular playoff participant, ever made the Lions…or any NFL roster. Dan Gronkowski and Alfonso Boone had careers with other teams after quickly washing out of Detroit.
Now consider comp picks are earned by not spending on free agents from the outside. Would you rather have had Glover Quin, Golden Tate, Marvin Jones, Reggie Bush, Trey Flowers or any other long-term Lions stalwarts or the comp picks that would have come from not signing them?
Don’t sweat the lack of compensatory picks. They’ve been almost completely pointless to the Detroit Lions.