The Grey Manes break down All-Star Week with analytical precision - dissecting standout performances from the Senior Bowl and Shrine Bowl to identify 2026 draft prospects who fit Detroit's championship blueprint. Which position battles got easier to solve? Which under-the-radar players just skyrocketed up Brad Holmes' board? We cut through the noise with film-based analysis, historical context, and the data-driven evaluation that separates smart draft strategy from draft-day reaches. No hot takes - just some evidence-based scouting report Lions fans need as April approaches.

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[0:00] On today's show of Lions Gray Manes, we're decoding All-Star Week, breaking down the Senior Bowl and the Shrine Bowl performances that could shape Detroit's championship window. Forward down the field.

[0:15] All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Lions Gray Manes. My name is Chris Stone. I'm at castahead.net and the other gentleman on the screen making me look absolutely invisible. My man dan keener how we doing not bad tuesday it's it's tuesday it's 7 p.m eastern and if you're not joining us live you're joining us on replay you miss this gorgeous gentleman uh who is the chief intelligence officer of lion's optimism my man dr brent crider dbc, Brent how we doing it looks like you're you're you have the most political thing going on tonight on the show Gibbs Laporta 24, yeah that was my vote, right in ballot baby right, awesome they have these players sponsored sites that you can get these types of t-shirts there's a lot of good ones like this, You know what? I think every show that we've had, Dan, Brent has worn something different. Every single show. I think he has, he's kind of like, you know, that girl in high school that you never saw a different outfit from her and you were just like, how does she have so many outfits? Brent, how do you have so many Lions t-shirts? It's amazing. The show is called Gray Manes for a reason.

[1:45] Over all these years, the opportunity to buy Lions shirts at every game and the wife's like, you know, you really don't need more t-shirts and I probably should count them someday, but I have a couple hundred shirts at least, t-shirts alone not counting jerseys and jackets and hats and all that Lions fans buy and I'll tell you what, remember 20 years ago when the Lions were terrible? You couldn't find good Lions gear anywhere.

[2:14] I literally have a black Ernie Sims jersey, so yes, I understand exactly what you're saying. Was that 50? Is that the number 50? It was number 50. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's another name we should have put on the list, right? For the Hall of the Underrated. Right. Ernie Sims. It's so much potential. Yes, Reggie Brown, Ernie Sims. There's some great... Reggie Brown. Reggie Brown. That brings back so many great, great memories. And you mentioned the Hall of the Underrated. We're going to have another segment later on in the show for the Hall of the Underrated. I'm very excited about that. But we've got some great stuff to roll into tonight. And as always, the first thing before we start to roll into the All-Star Games and the Shrine Bowl and the Senior Bowl and all that great stuff, DBC has got, man, he has got this thing all on lock. Before we go into that, we're going to start to talk about some recent Lions news, some weird contract stuff that's going on, Dan, and some other stuff. So let's roll into it. Yep. Yeah, so yesterday came out that both Levi Amuzurike and Josh Pascal.

[5:31] Lot of fanfare with these guys supposed to be depth that, you know, D tackle, uh, an edge and, you know, uh, it just, you know, last year sucked because we didn't have them, you know, and we were rolling some guys in now we got tie leak in there. We still need help at edge. So we'll see where that goes. Um, but the, the, the other quirky thing is in the off season, in the NFL, your top 51 contracts count towards your salary cap. Uh, so you have to keep the top 51 as of the first day of the year, which is in March, I don't know, it's like the 18th or 13th or something like that. You have to be in compliance to salary cap. Well, both these guys, they were, I think 15, 1.5 million and like 1.8 million. So they kicked a couple of the cheaper contracts out of the top 51. So now we are an additional, you know, almost 51.5 million in the hole. So we've got to clear a little over $8.5 million between now and start of the new league year to be in compliance. But of course, we need more than that because we've got guys who need to re-sign like Laporta and possibly.

[6:39] You know, new free agents coming in the door and so forth. So, uh, but that's, that's the first one. Uh, the next thing, uh, just, just a little self-promotion for the org here. Uh, we're giving our website a bit of an upgrade to soft season. We're working on expanding some sections, cleaning some things up, making it look a little bit nicer. So, you know, feel free to go to the gray, gray mains.com. Um, we'll have a lot of expanded draft data on there this year that we haven't had in the past, including a brand new piece that we're running, that we're putting together as we're tracking all the interactions that are taking place with players, starting with these all-star games, which Brent's going to get into here in a minute. So the American bowl, the shrine bowl, the East West game, and then rolling into like top 30 visits, the combine virtual visits, pretty much anything that where the, where to these players because one thing we've noticed over the years is that brad does tend to try and grab guys yeah that he has had talked to or um someone on the staff has been involved with at some point so, And that's about it for, for the breaking news. I'm not going to have Brent give me questions to ask like SNL and he's not going to give me questions to ask, thankfully. So our wives will be happy about that.

[8:00] But I'm going to throw it over to Brent, if you're ready and move on to our next topic. Yeah, I do want to do some great work on it. Let's let's sort of dovetail on what Dan said, and then we'll roll into the segment about senior bowl and the shrine bowl. Brent, let's let, you know, let, let's have you comment on some of this stuff, Levi and Josh Paschal. These were guys that obviously redrafted fairly high and, uh, they have shown and shown flashes of talent. Um, you know, uh, talk about what this means in your opinion, Brent to, uh, you know, from a, from a defensive line, uh, depth perspective and, uh, what's a realistic expectations for both of the, these players. Yeah. Well, I think this just, again, there's more evidence here of Holmes' ability to maneuver, right?

[8:57] We sometimes have folks who are big critics of Holmes, and I just, I'm amazed at some of the things that he comes up with that are new. And it's rare. It happened this year a couple times with Campbell in terms of rules and things like that. But they do a fantastic job of understanding the collective bargaining agreement and how to maneuver the contracts to the Lions' advantage. And look, if healthy, I think these are two really good pieces to the defensive front. I don't think there's a downside to this at all. I think it's a situation where the Lions need, with all the free agents that we have pending on the defense, As Dan's pointed out a number of times, two linebackers under contract, and we have the need to kind of restock that front with DJ Reader and Lopez being free agents. So...

[9:55] We can either re-sign. We've suggested that we look at re-signing Reader on a friendly deal, and Lopez certainly proved his worth this year. So it just adds more players, better players than the depth that we might have had last year. So I'm happy with what's happened here, and I'm ecstatic with the fact that we can focus, because when we get into the discussions here in a minute about the draft, and specifically for this particular pod is the players that participated in the Shrine Bowl and the Senior Bowl. And so when you can narrow your focus and you can say, I don't have a need immediately at these positions, I think it just sets the lines up really, really well with the players that are going to be available where we're picking. I love that. So let's transition into that.