Allen Park — He was a Tiger before he was a Lion, but if you knew anything about Blake Miller before this NFL draft kicked off, you knew the Clemson offensive tackle was a Lion at heart.
And now that it’s official, after Detroit used the 17th overall pick to complete an overhaul of their offensive line with another mauler to help the run game — and help protect Jared Goff while he’s at it — the only real surprise is that there was any suspense at all when the Lions were on the clock.
Before that, though, it was a different story. And general manager Brad Holmes admitted later he was getting antsy in the Lions’ draft room, especially after three other offensive tackles came off the board in a span of four picks (Nos. 9-12) Thursday night. The Lions already had made some calls to see what it would cost to move up in the first round, but even as the board began to fall their way in the teens, Holmes was still feeling a bit skittish.
Everyone knew the Lions’ biggest positional need coming into this draft — “We had this big tackle target,” Holmes joked — and the fear in Allen Park was another team might leapfrog Detroit and grab the one they really wanted. Those worries ultimately proved unfounded, though, which meant everyone in Allen Park could finally exhale.
“I’ll tell you what,” Holmes said. “When you think about Blake Miller, you sleep easy. You sleep very, very good at night.”
It’s easy to see why. Miller is a 6-foot-7, 318-pound prototype for the tackle position, complete with 34 1/4″ arms, a sky-high football IQ, elite athleticism and the kind of tenacity that’s tailor-made for this Lions offense.
“Really, you just turn on the tape,” head coach Dan Campbell told Fox 2 Detroit. “The guy is a physical finisher, man.”
He’s also arguably the “cleanest” prospect in this draft, when you factor in his character and his durability.
Miller, 22, didn’t just start every game in a four-year collegiate career that included 54 games and 3,778 snaps. He only missed a couple practices at Clemson. Spring practices, at that. And it’s safe to say it was an excused absence, seeing as how it was due to him having surgery to repair a broken bone in his wrist. Miller, a sophomore at the time, kept practicing with a soft cast before surgery, then returned with a club on his hand that “looked like a giant snowball on the end of my hand.”
Holmes likes that story — “That’s what he’s all about, and that’s why he’s such a fit here,” he says — and I would imagine Campbell loves this part even more: What bothered Miller wasn’t the cast he had to wear, it was the doctor’s scheduling conflicts.
“It was the only day they had for surgery, so I had to miss a practice for that,” Miller said, “which kind of sucked.”
As for missing a game, though?
“Oh, I honestly don’t know that I’ve missed a game,” he said. “Definitely not in high school. I don’t think in middle school, either.”
That ironman streak extended through Clemson’s bowl game, too, as Miller declined to opt out last winter as many NFL-bound players do these days. It didn’t matter to him that it was the Pinstripe Bowl on the heels of a disappointing 7-5 regular season, because as the Tigers’ Dabo Swinney noted, “he’s one of the most committed guys I’ve ever coached.”
“I think I owe it to my teammates to be on the field,” he explained Thursday. “There are so many people in any organization that put in so much work — not only just your teammates, but also the (coaching) staff, support staff, people behind the scenes. You know, I owe it to them to be available, and to pay it forward to them.”
But if you pause to rewind here, you’ll see the full picture of what this draft pick means for Holmes & Co. In the span of 12 months now, they’ve completely overhauled the position group that both propelled their rise to the top of the NFC and also precipitated their fall as age and injuries took their toll in the trenches last fall.
“We definitely got younger, and I think that’s going to be big going forward, just for our future and the importance of that position as a whole,” said Holmes, who started the process last spring when he used a second-round pick to add right guard Tate Ratledge.
This spring, after cutting loose veteran mainstays Taylor Decker and Graham Glasgow, the Lions’ GM made his lone free-agent splash in signing a 26-year-old center in Cade Mays, who is coming off a breakout season in Carolina. He also added some interior depth by acquiring Juice Scruggs (trade) and Ben Bartch. And now with Miller, who’ll battle another free-agent signing in Larry Borom for the starting right tackle job in training camp, the Lions think they’ve found another young anchor opposite Penei Sewell, the All-Pro that Campbell says is ready to switch to left tackle.
Sewell’s flexibility gave the front office some of its own heading into this draft. They weren’t left searching for a left tackle to replace Decker, necessarily. They were simply looking for a promising prospect at a premium position who fit their mold, which Miller does in almost every way.
And in some ways, he’s as sure of a thing as Holmes has drafted since he made Sewell his first pick as GM back in 2021. Because all that football Miller played in college meant a whole lot of tape for NFL teams to pick apart. And according to Campbell, the more the Lions watched, the more he separated himself from some of the other tackles, including Georgia’s Monroe Freeling, a less-polished talent who went 19th overall to the Panthers. (In all, seven offensive tackles went in Thursday’s first round.)
“He probably has no idea, but we’ve been watching Blake for about four years now, and he literally has gotten better every single year,” Holmes said. “That’s what makes you really excited about a player like that: He actually has a high floor, but he’s gotten better every year. And so coming to this level with our offensive line coach and our ecosystem, I don’t see any reason why he won’t continue.”
That doesn’t mean the job here is complete, obviously. Detroit owns eight more picks in this draft, and Holmes has plenty of needs to fill, including at edge rusher. But as the Lions called it a night after Round 1, they could at least close their eyes and know they’d tackled their biggest issue.
john.niyo@detroitnews.com
@JohnNiyo
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Niyo: With Blake Miller pick, Lions can rest easy after tackling biggest need
Reporting by John Niyo, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
