Brad Holmes was hired by the Detroit Lions all the way back in 2003, but backed out of the job

Detroit Lions GM Brad Holmes has been one-half of the best thing that has ever happened to this long downtrodden franchise. In just a few short years, Holmes has taken the Lions from the worst team in the league to a perennial contender. 

Holmes took the general manager job with the Lions in 2021, but on Tuesday, he went on the Field Talk podcast with Field Yates and talked about how he was almost hired by the Lions in 2003. 

When Holmes was trying to break into the NFL, he worked as a PR intern in the NBA for the Atlanta Hawks. After that concluded, he had an opportunity to interview with the St. Louis Rams, but then he also had an opportunity to interview with the Lions. 

"Never in a million years would I thought that I'd be the general manager of the Detroit Lions. You know, a lot of people don't know. When I was trying to get into the NFL, I had to go the PR route, and I had a couple of interviews, one with the Rams, but one with the Lions as well." Holmes said. "I actually went to Detroit right when the, I think the facility had just opened up in Allen Park, and it was probably like a year old, and that was back in 2003 and I went up there and interviewed for the job and so it was like all these kind of breadcrumbs that was in my journey that kept saying, 'Detroit Lions."

Wow! Can you imagine what that would have been like? Holmes would have been in the PR department as an intern. It gets even crazier. The Lions offered the job to Holmes, and he "kinda accepted it." Ultimately, Holmes felt that there was more of a chance to get past being an intern with the Rams and had to call the Lions to back out of the job. 

Holmes took the job with the Rams. After his internship ended, he joined the Rams' scouting department, and the rest is history. What a story. Holmes could have grown with the Lions and could have been a huge advantage as a scout and a scouting director for all those years.