Darius Slay Re-sign 4-year $89.5M with Detroit Lions

For the past several years, the Pride of Detroit staff has undertaken a pretty hefty project in the offseason to gauge the state of the Detroit Lions franchise.

Several of us decided to rank every single player on the 90-man roster. While it admittedly is a way to kill some time and generate discussion during a dead period of the offseason, it’s also a good exercise to evaluate the team’s depth and compare it to other teams from the Lions’ past. For example, here were the top 25 players on our list from the 2017 team.

Ouch.

If you’re curious how these lists looked in the past, you can see the 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019 versions with the links attached to each year.

For a quick explanation of our process, our staff was not given any instruction other than ranking the roster. They were not asked to prioritize certain positions or given any definition of what defines best. This is simply everyone’s own definition of what makes each player best. After everyone submitted their picks, we simply averaged the rankings to create a master list. The following Pride of Detroit staffers submitted rankings: Jeremy Reisman, Erik Schlitt, Ryan Mathews, Morgan Cannon, Meko Scott, Brandon Knapp, John Whiticar, Jerry Mallory, Max Gerber, and Zac Snyder.

Like in previous editions, we’re going to roll our list out 10 players at a time, starting at the bottom—Note: because the Lions only have 89 players on their current roster, this first installment will only include nine players.

89. Chelen Garnes, S (Highest ranking: 84, Lowest rankings: 89)

Last year’s ranking: N/A

As is the case most years, the bottom tier of players on the roster is filled with players from the Lions’ rookie UDFA class. In fact, all nine of the players in today’s list are UDFAs.

Garnes got just $18,000 in guarantees in his Lions contact and faces an uphill battle to make the team’s roster, despite relatively short depth at safety. That said, Garnes was a two-year starter at Wake Forest and tallied 132 tackles, and 2.5 sacks since 2022.

88. Loren Strickland, S (Highest ranking: 77, Lowest rankings: 88)

Last year’s ranking: N/A

Despite his higher ranking, Strickland’s path may be even tougher than Garnes. He has even fewer guarantees in his contract ($5,000), and he likely has a longer developmental arc coming from Ball State—and only starting five games for the program.

87. Hogan Hatten, LS (Highest ranking: 70, Lowest rankings: 89)

Last year’s ranking: N/A

It’s a time-honored tradition to rank any long snappers not named Don Muhlbach in the bottom 10 of our lists. No offense to Hogan Hatten—who likely has a real chance to beat out Scott Daly for the long snapping job (otherwise he wouldn’t be on the roster)—but backup long snapper is not going to get a lot of love from a roster this deep.

86. Jalon Calhoun, WR (Highest ranking: 73, Lowest rankings: 89)

Last year’s ranking: N/A

Calhoun ($50,000 in guarantees) has been a bit overshadowed by another UDFA receiver (Illinois’ Isaiah Williams), but given Detroit’s need for receiver depth, he shouldn’t be overlooked too quickly. Though he’s likely in a tough spot as a slot receiver candidate, he had three years of strong production at Duke and he brings good experience as a returner, too. Think of Calhoun as a potential long-term replacement for Kalif Raymond, should he make the practice squad and develop.

85. Isaac Ukwu, EDGE (Highest ranking: 76, Lowest rankings: 88)

Last year’s ranking: N/A

Ukwu got put on a more national stage last year by transferring to Ole Miss and tallying 3.5 sacks as a part-time starter for the Rebels. His 80.8 PFF pass rush grade last season ranked 33rd in the nation among EDGE defenders with at least 250 pass rushing snaps, so he does have some skills despite low production numbers. His 16.4 win rate was even better at 27th in the country.

84. DaRon Gilbert, LB (Highest ranking: 76, Lowest rankings: 86)

Last year’s ranking: N/A