ALLEN PARK — Dan Campbell and Brad Holmes have been doing this together for five years now. But that doesn’t mean cutting dozens and dozens of players gets any easier for the Detroit Lions coach and general manager.
Campbell spoke with reporters on Monday morning, one day ahead of the NFL’s deadline for teams to trim their rosters to 53 players by 4 p.m. Tuesday.
“Today will be a tough day, and that’s the best I can say right now,” Campbell said. “Appreciate those guys and all the hard work they put into it.”
Campbell said he and Holmes met last night and would start talking to players on Monday, with some potential last-minute conversations on Tuesday.
The Lions have 87 players on their active roster, with five on injured reserve, one on the non-football injury list, three on active/PUP and one on reserve/PUP. They have to get their active roster down to 53 players this week, then they will start piecing together the 16 spots on the practice squad.
Campbell said Holmes should have more information on how the Lions plan to use their two injured reserve to return designations later this week. He also added that there should be more clarity on rookie edge defender Ahmed Hassanein’s status (pectoral injury) when Holmes speaks, too.
“Look, you got to do it, right?” Campbell said. “It’s something you have to do. You want to do it as respectfully as you can. You don’t want to lie to the player. You just tell them straight up, and it’s hard. But it’s the right way to do it.
“We’ll try to do most of everything today, hopefully by the end of the day. There could be a couple that we don’t get to, maybe last-minute tomorrow. It is what it is. There is nothing easy about it, and it’s worse on them than it is on us. It’s hard on us. But there is no woe is me here. I feel sorry for those guys.”
This process was also covered extensively when the Lions were featured on HBO’s “Hard Knocks” series in 2022. Campbell previously explained how these are two of his least favorite days of the year, based on his experience as an NFL player.
He said, “You’ve sat in the seats they have, you’ve been through the grind, you’ve been through camp, you know the aches and pains … ”
Campbell also had a message on Monday for those cut to use this as fuel moving forward: “to attack the next day and not let it shake your confidence.”
Expect a flurry of moves over the next couple of days around the league. Players cut with less than four years of service time are subject to waivers, while veterans are free agents and can pick their next team.
Last year, coming off cut day, the Lions used only one waiver claim to bring back linebacker Trevor Nowaske from the Arizona Cardinals. The waiver priority order is decided by the draft order, meaning the Lions have the 28th spot, so their options are more limited than the rest of the NFL in that regard.
“We love our practice squad, man,” Campbell said. “I feel like that’s another one of those things that we have done a really job of here and found guys that fit us and that we can count on, really over the last two or three years. Those guys are a big part of what we do. Yeah, we feel pretty good. There will be a number of those guys that we’d be excited to have back that we trust.
“But, at the same token, we’re looking at other rosters, too. We’re looking to see if there are some guys that we feel like could upgrade us in other areas on the practice squad.”
