The Lions avoided a rebuild killing mistake early on and it's paying off big now

My big argument was that the Lions needed to take the road less traveled. Most teams at the start of a rebuild try to start things off with a quarterback. I think that's a mistake. When you do that, you immediately make the rebuild about one player and one position. A position where draft picks don't work out way more than they do work out. 

The route I felt the Lions should take was to stick with Goff and build up the rest of the roster so that you could have a solid group that was a quarterback away from doing big things instead of having things like they were with Matthew Stafford where the Lions were a roster away from doing big things. 

That's what the Lions wound up doing. They avoided quarterback in the 2021 NFL draft and they instead drafted Penei Sewell, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Derrick Barnes, Ifeatu Melifonwu and Alim McNeil. All players that are major parts of the team now.

What they didn't do was draft a quarterback from a class that has turned out to be really bad. Trevor Lawrence has taken a step back, Mac Jones just got traded and is now Lawrence's backup, Justin Fields got traded for a sixth round pick, Zach Wilson is probably going to get released after the Jets don't find a trade partner and Trey Lance got traded to the Cowboys to be Dak Prescot's backup.

2022 was worse. Kenny Pickett, the only first round quarterback, just got traded to be the Eagles to be Jalen Hurts backup, Desmond Ridder just got replaced by Kirk Cousins and Malik Willis is buried on the Titans roster. Clearly nobody thought Brock Purdy was going to be as good as he has been. He was the last player taken in that draft. 

The Lions saved their entire rebuild by sticking with Goff and not drafting a quarterback in 2021 or 2022. Drafting a quarterback to be the franchises cornerstone is the biggest move a GM can make and you typically only get one chance at it. If Brad Holmes drafted any of these quarterbacks, there's a very realistic chance that we're talking about the Lions looking for a new GM right now instead of talking about a potential Super Bowl in 2024. 

This is huge. It's like a meteor was heading directly for the Lions and Brad Holmes, Dan Campbell and the rest of the Lions oil drilling team flew up into space and set a bomb off on that meteor to prevent the Lions rebuild from going through Armageddon. That move, or the lack of a move, has done nothing but pay off for the Lions.