Brad Holmes Makes Telling Comment About LB Malcolm Rodriguez

Lions do not want to overhype rookie linebacker Malcolm Rodriguez.

The Detroit Lions recognized quickly linebacker Malcolm Rodriguez could be a player that was active on Sundays during the regular season. 

His abilities on special teams and his progression up the linebackers depth chart have caught the attention of supporters and media members.

General manager Brad Holmes explained to reporters this week that it is still early to diagnose how Rodriguez's game will translate to playing linebacker during the regular season. 

"How quickly is the first, second, third-down stuff going to translate playing linebacker? And Ray (Agnew) mentioned just his processing skills, being a quarterback in high school, you know what I mean? He’s just got a level of key and diagnose that has translated," said Holmes. "But again, you just don’t know quickly it’s going to come. But, it’s come, come quick, and -- but can’t say enough that he is a rookie. He hadn’t played an NFL game yet, so let’s just see where it goes.”

For the front office and coaching staff, there has been a concerted effort to downplay any extra added hype that may have come the young linebackers direction. 

From defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn to linebackers coach Kelvin Sheppard, it has been reiterated that the young linebacker is inexperienced and has only appeared in NFL games that are chalk full of reserves. 

Now, games matter and will count in the standings, so the talented linebacker will be given every opportunity to shine. 

Detroit's front office is sticking to their evaluation process and will avoid making grand proclamations regarding their process, even if Rodriguez ends up being a star player.

It was telling that Holmes revealed there were linebackers the team could have selected with better physical traits.  

"There’s certain positions that you can kind of look at and assess that you may be able to find gold in the later rounds, and inside linebackers, it’s a good volume of them throughout the Draft," said Holmes. "But it’s still got to be the right guy. I mean, there’s inside linebackers that had better physical traits than Malcolm Rodriguez in the later rounds. But we decided to go the route that we went. Not saying that you’re going to hit like that all the time, but we’ll just stick to our same process.”