When he was hired as Detroit Lions’ general manager, Brad Holmes was tasked with rebuilding a roster from the ashes left behind by “Quinntricia”, the pseudonym given to previous general manager Bob Quinn and his anointed head coaching hire Matt Patricia.

As we know, rooted in great drafting, Holmes has built a Super Bowl-contending roster fairly quickly. No general manager bats 1.000 in the draft, but Holmes has hit far more than he’s even come close to missing. Time will tell if the 2024 draft class builds on that run, but some very early returns look good.

As Holmes builds his track record in the draft, and everyone can start to forget about past draft mistakes by previous regimes in Detroit, naming the worst draft pick by the Lions over a recent span of years stretches back further and will eventually get harder.

Nick Faria of Pro Football Network took a run at identifying each NFL’s teams worst draft pick over the last five years. That means the 2019-2023 drafts, since the 2024 draft class literally has no resume to evaluate.

Worst Lions draft pick of last five year stands out easily

After forcing Darius Slay out of town with a trade to the Philadelphia Eagles in March of 2020, Patricia needed a new No. 1 cornerback. With the third overall pick in that April’s draft, the Lions took Ohio State cornerback Jeff Okudah. He was Faria’s selection as the team’s worst pick over the last five drafts.

“Jeff Okudah’s miss for Detroit should have sunk the Lions for a while. Instead, the Lions have bounced back with a couple of elite drafts that have set them nicely in the NFC. Still, they had to address the corner position in the offseason this year due to Okudah’s miss being that big.”

Injuries played a big part in Okudah failing to live up to his draft position. He missed seven games as a rookie, with hamstring, shoulder and groin issues. The latter injury put him on IR, and led to core muscle surgery on both sides in the offseason.

A torn Achilles in Week 1 of the 2021 season cost Okudah that season. He was healthy for the start of the 2022 season and played very well for a stretch, but a concussion, an illness and an elbow injury cost him time and impacted his performance late that season. Picking up his fifth-year option was never really an option, and he was traded to the Atlanta Falcons for a fifth-round pick in April of 2023. After one year there, he signed with the Houston Texans this offseason.

Okudah was automatically anointed as Slay’s successor, and he was also behind the eight-ball of having to play for Patricia as a rookie. Excuses, reasons or otherwise, he easily stands out as the Lions’ worst draft pick of the last five years. A competent regime has softened the impact of a top-five overall pick miss by its predecessors.