NFL Draft grades 2015: Mel Kiper, others chime in on Lions' picks

To truly evaluate a team's NFL Draft class, you need at least two or three years to get a sense of how it has performed. Some players might step it up or wash out before then, but for a complete picture of how a draft went, it takes at least a couple of years to figure things out.

Of course, waiting two or three years to evaluate a draft class isn't much fun, which is why draft grades are so popular. The process of handing out grades for players who have never played a down in the NFL may not make a ton of sense on the surface, but at the very least you can evaluate how a team went about filling its needs.

This year, for the Detroit Lions, they have received the following grades for their 2015 draft class:

• Pride Of Detroit's Alex Reno: B+
• SB Nation's Dan Kadar: B
• ESPN's Mel Kiper: B
• Sports Illustrated's Doug Farrar: A-
• Rotoworld's Evan Silva: C+
• CBS Sports' Rob Rang: B-
• CBS Sports' Pete Prisco: B-

These grades are actually pretty similar to the grades the Lions received after last year's draft. What exactly does that mean? Well, not much. We haven't seen these players play a down of NFL football yet, and the jury is still out on the 2014 draft class as a whole. This year's class seems poised to make much more of an immediate impact than last year's class did, but that's really just speculation on my part.