Ok, look. I know what you’re thinking. “Mike, the Lions have Sam LaPorta. They’re good.” That is so true.

The Lions traded away T.J. Hockenson in 2022, and it made a ton of sense.

He was not a fit for the Lions, and paying the massive $66 million contract the Vikings gave him would not benefit the team.

All of that was a win, but what has backfired on the Lions is not the fact that they made the trade; it’s what they got out of it, which was close to nothing.

The trade details are as follows: The Lions sent Hockenson, a 2023 fourth-round pick, and a 2024 fourth-round pick to the Minnesota Vikings for a 2023 second-round pick and a 2024 third-round pick. Not bad when you consider it that way.

But when you look at what the Lions got with these picks, it’s bad except for one player.

The Lions walked out of this trade with Hendon Hooker, Brodric Martin, and Antoine Green.

By Tuesday night, all three of these players could no longer be with the Lions. Green is already gone.

Everyone had high hopes for him last summer, but then he suffered a season-ending concussion in the preseason.

The Lions waived him shortly after. He hasn’t played football since.

Martin was a big reach at the time. The Lions traded up in the third round to get him in the 2023 NFL Draft, and he wound up just playing five games for Detroit.

This summer was a big one for him to prove he deserved to be on the roster, and he struggled.

There’s a slight chance he could make the practice squad, but the Lions are deep on the defensive line, and he’s somewhere near the bottom right now.

As for Hooker, this pick just never made a lot of sense.

He was too old to be a successor to Goff, and he played in a system at Tennessee that didn’t translate well to the NFL.

There’s no doubt there’s an athlete there, and he has talent, but he’s struggled with timing and mental stuff since day one, and he hasn’t gotten over that.

There’s still a slight chance the Lions could keep him, but it’s hard to see it happening at this point.

There is one big positive, or something that looks like a big positive.

We mentioned earlier that there was one player the Lions acquired in this trade who’s good: Terrion Arnold.

The Lions used the 2024 third-round pick they got from the Vikings to trade up with the Cowboys in the 2024 NFL Draft.

Arnold is a starter and has looked good this summer.

The last part of this deal is an unknown, and that’s Sione Vaki.

He’s a good special teams player, but we don’t know what the ceiling is there yet. So not everything backfired, but still, this one is overwhelmingly bad.

If you’re interested in how the Lions got all of this out of the trade, here’s the breakdown:

The Lions took the 2023 second-round pick (55th pick) and moved it to Kansas City in exchange for a second (63), fourth (122), and seventh-round pick (249).

They traded the 63rd pick to Denver, along with the 183rd pick acquired in the Trinity Benson trade, and received the 68th and 139th picks in return. The 68th pick turned out to be Hooker.

They traded the 139th pick, along with the 122nd pick they received from KC, to Arizona for the pick that would be used to select Martin.

The Lions moved pick 249 to Philadelphia as part of the D’Andre Swift trade.

They got back the 219th pick and a 2025 fourth-round pick. They would use the 219th pick to select Green.

The 2025 fourth-round pick was sent back to the Eagles to trade up for Vaki.

View post: The Hendon Hooker era is offcially over in Detroit, 3 options the Lions can replace him with, including a rookie with connections to the team