With long wait on Day 3, Lions GM 'mindful of not being a prisoner of the moment'

Allen Park — Now, we wait.

After selecting a cornerback in each of the first two rounds of the NFL Draft, the Lions must now wait a whopping 103 picks before making their first pick on Day 3.

It’s a situation Lions general manager Brad Holmes hasn’t frequently experienced in his first three drafts with the Lions. You have to go all the way back to 2021 — when he doubled up on third- and fourth-round picks, leaving him with a 144-pick gap between Rounds 4 and 7 — to find such a sizable distance between draft picks in the Holmes era. 

The Lions selected Missouri cornerback Ennis Rakestraw with the 61st overall pick Friday night. Detroit’s next pick comes at No. 164. The Lions had two third-round picks entering the offseason but dealt one in a March trade for cornerback Carlton Davis III and another Thursday night to move up five spots and select Alabama cornerback Terrion Arnold at No. 24.

While it might be tempting to trade up and close the gap on Saturday afternoon, Holmes is hoping to demonstrate delayed gratification.

“I’ll consider anything if the player is right,” Holmes said. “But then you also got to look at, OK, these resources that you allocate to move up and the future capital and all that, we also have meetings of, ‘OK, what’s that gonna look like when this time comes next year? What’s that gonna affect what we might do in the future?’

“I try to be very, very mindful of not being a prisoner of the moment.”

Holmes said he had to fight that sensation early on Day 2, when Detroit had a 37-pick gap between selections. With teams inevitably having first-round grades on players that drop into the second round, there’s usually going to be a player or two that they feel strongly about going up to get.

“It’s funny…(we) kind of went into today thinking we’re just gonna sit there at 61 and stay pat and see what falls to us, but we were actually making calls trying to get into the high 30s and 40s,” Holmes said. “I kind of just woke up with an aggressive mindset and there was some dudes still out there that we really liked, and so we were just trying to get them.”

Holmes’ patience paid off when he landed Rakestraw, the No. 2 cornerback on their board, without having to move an inch. He said a similar situation arose last year with tight end Sam LaPorta, in another scenario where Holmes was able to get his guy without having to move up despite the temptation.

“It seems like every single year there’s gonna be a Day 2 dawg that you’re like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I really want’ and sometimes you gotta catch yourself,” Holmes said. “Like, last year it was LaPorta. It’s always going to be that person…but you just got to be disciplined from that standpoint and kind of go through it, that you’re willing to go through the consequences, if there is any, for what those move-ups can mean for the future.”

Holmes referenced the Stanford marshmallow experiment, where children were given a marshmallow (or another treat of choice) and told they could have an additional treat if they can resist the temptation to eat it over a certain amount of time. 

That’s the type of discipline Holmes is hoping to put on display in Day 3.

“Sometimes you just gotta embrace that delayed gratification,” he said.

nbianchi@detroitnews.com

@nolanbianchi