In 2022, the Detroit Lions made a huge trade when they sent former first-round pick T.J. 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.
Make no mistake, trading Hockenson was the right thing for the Lions to do. They were able to make a lot of things happen by not having to pay him the $66 million extension the Vikings signed him to.
That’s not what went wrong here. What went wrong is what came after the trade, with what the Lions did with their compensation and what the Vikings did with theirs.
The Lions wound up getting Terrion Arnold out of this deal. That’s the big win for Detroit. Not bad at all, right? They got a starting cornerback with a lot of upside and a bright future. Apart from that, this is what they got after either using the picks or trading them around.
Hendon Hooker
Going into his third season with the team and he’s going to have to battle it out with Kyle Allen for the QB2 spot, assuming the Lions don’t draft another quarterback, which they might do. Hooker struggled at camp last year and got bumped by fresh out retirement Teddy Bridgewater going into he playoffs because the Lions didn’t feel he was ready. He’ll be 28 this season.
Brodric Martin
Martin is going into year three, and the consensus on him from Lions fans is that it just has not worked out, and that consensus might be right. We’re not totally ready to give up on him yet, but he is buried pretty deep on the interior defensive line, and he could go deeper if the Lions draft another interior guy in a couple of weeks. This is a big summer for him to prove it, or he might be the odd man out.
Antoine Green
Fans had high hopes for Green last summer, but then he suffered a season-ending concussion in the preseason. The Lions waived him shortly after, and then he reverted back to Detroit after clearing waivers. At this point, he is on the roster. We don’t know if that means he’ll play or what. But with Detroit expected to look for more receivers in the draft, that’s not a good sign for him.
J.J. McCarthy
The Vikings used the 2024 fourth-round pick the Lions gave them to trade up for McCarthy. The jury is firmly out on this one, but if this guy winds up being the Vikings’ long-term quarterback and he’s good, that’s just an added layer to this.
At the end of the day, the Lions made the right move by trading Hockenson, and they did get Arnold out of this, but man, everything else looks like it went pretty wrong. If they had to do it over again, I’m sure they’d still make this trade because it wound up with them going after Sam LaPorta.