Lions GM Brad Holmes Reveals the Player He Regrets Not Drafting

Since taking over as the general manager of the Detroit Lions, Brad Holmes has done a pretty great job of building the squad through the draft.

This year, Holmes oversaw his fifth NFL Draft. In his four previous drafts he selected 13 players who will be part of the team's starting lineup this season when the roster is fully healthy.

Those players have earned a bunch of Pro Bowl and All-Pro spots and been a huge part of the team's rise to the upper echelon of the league.

Despite his success, there is still one player that Holmes wishes he had selected for the Lions.

During a recent appearance on the "This Is Football" podcast with ESPN's Kevin Clark, Holmes named Los Angeles Rams wide receiver Puka Nacua as the player he regrets not drafting.

The Rams selected Nacua in the fifth round of the 2023 draft with the 177th overall pick and it's a move that has worked out incredibly well for them. He broke the NFL's record for receiving yards by a rookie with 1486 yards. That earned him All-Pro honors.

This past season he was limited to 11 games, but still averaged 90 yards per game and pulled in 79 catches.

The Lions' fifth-round pick from that draft hasn't turned into quite the same kind of a success.

Detroit selected offensive lineman Colby Sorsdal with the 152nd overall pick in the 2023 draft. He appeared in 16 games as a rookie, but didn't take a single offensive snap in 2024.

He has now been added to the season-ending IR for the 2025 season.

At the time the Lions likely felt they didn't really need Nacua. Amon-Ra St. Brown was already thriving and they had spent a first rounder on Jameson Williams a year earlier. Josh Reynolds was also still acting as a solid third option at the position in 2023.

It still would have been a lot of fun to see what the Lions' offense would have been capable of with Nacua, St. Brown, and Williams playing together, but I think that during his tenure with the Lions, Holmes has earned a pass for missing out on Nacua.