Each NFL team can host 30 prospects for visits prior to the draft to get to know them better. This is really the final part of the evaluation process, and it just wrapped up on Wednesday. Teams can now start to finalize their draft boards, taking into account anything new they learned from these visits.
For the Lions, this year there seemed to be a lot more publicity about who they decided to bring in for visits. The team's official site actually published stories about certain players that visited (mostly potential first-round picks), and other visits were reported by sources like National Football Post and some of the local papers. This allowed all of us to get an idea of which players the Lions may be targeting, or at least were targeting prior to the visits.
In order to keep track of who has visited the Lions in the last month or so, I have assembled a tracker that is based strictly on the visits that have been reported. There are not 30 players listed below, so just go ahead and assume that there were visits that went unreported. It's definitely possible that the Lions didn't use all 30 of their visits, but I would imagine that they used more than 17, which is the number of players I have listed in the tracker.
Anyways, here is a look at which players have been reported as being hosted for a prospect visit by the Lions (dates are approximations, because sometimes an exact date wasn't reported and because a player may arrive on one day and not have his official visit until the next day):
RB Deji Karim (Southern Illinois) - N/A (It's not certain if Karim visited the Lions or just privately worked out for them)
FB John Connor (Kentucky) - March 29
TE Ed Dickson (Oregon) - March 18
TE Jimmy Graham (Miami, FL) - N/A (It was held at some point during the week of March 29)
TE Aaron Hernandez (Florida) - April 14
OT Russell Okung (Oklahoma State) - March 15
OT Trent Williams (Oklahoma) - April 6
OT Charles Brown (USC) - N/A (It was held at some point during the week of April 5)
OG Mike Iupati - N/A (He also privately worked out for the Lions)
DE Jason Pierre-Paul (South Florida) - N/A (It was held at some point after April 8)
DT Gerald McCoy (Oklahoma) - March 18
DT Ndamukong Suh (Nebraska) - March 19
DT Hall Davis (Louisiana-Lafayette) - April 13
CB Perrish Cox (Oklahoma State) - N/A (It was held at some point in April)
CB Patrick Robinson (Florida State) - N/A (It was held at some point during the week of April 5)
CB Robert McClain (Connecticut) - April 13
S Kam Chancellor (Virginia Tech) - N/A (It was held at some point during the week of April 5)
In addition to the players listed above, the Lions have reportedly privately worked out quarterbacks Jonathan Crompton (Tennessee) and Bill Stull (Pittsburgh), offensive tackle Zane Beadles (Utah), and linebacker Danny Batten (South Dakota State). Just as with the visits, it's probable that other private workouts were held and we just didn't hear about them.
If I have missed any visits or workouts that have been reported, let me know in the comments (please try to provide a link so I don't have to search for a source) and I will update the tracker.