5 takeaways from Lions GM Bob Quinn’s sitdown with media

Per tradition, Detroit Lions general manager Bob Quinn met with the media during this week at the NFL owners meetings. Several important topics were discussed on Monday afternoon, including his thoughts on a Damon Harrison Sr. extension and some of his thoughts on the Lions’ new free agency signings.

Pride of Detroit was not present in Arizona this week, but here are the five biggest takeaways from the media meeting, as taken from other local sources.

1. Extending Damon Harrison is not a priority... for now

As it seems to be every year for the Lions, contract extensions don’t look like they’ll be addressed until the summer. Although Quinn admitted he talked to Drew Rosenhaus—Harrison’s new agent—this week, he said extending Snacks will not be something they seriously discuss until later in the offseason.

“Not something that I need to do right now,” Quinn said per the Detroit News. “My priority right now is the draft. We got another month or so before the draft is here, so that’s something that we’ll probably talk about in May or June.”

2. Justin Coleman is more of an inside corner

After the Lions signed Justin Coleman, it was widely believed he’ll play the nickel role in Detroit. However, as fans dug deeper and Detroit’s plan for the No. 2 outside cornerback became less clear, some speculated that he’d play on the outside, as he did during his brief playing time with the Patriots. That would certainly explain the monster contract Detroit handed Coleman.

However, it appears that’s not really the plan. Quinn wouldn’t commit to making Coleman a pure nickel cornerback, but he certainly sounded more comfortable having him on the inside.

“I would say, going forward, he’s more inside than outside,” Quinn said per MLive. “But we’re going to go through the process and see how he fits within the group. I’d say we have a lot of players that have that inside-outside flexibility on our team at the corner position. We’re going put them all out there in the offseason, during training camp and figure out where guys are going to play.”

3. Team rolled the dice with Malcolm Brown signing attempt

The Lions tried to add to their running back depth by going for restricted free agent Malcolm Brown. Unfortunately, their two-year, $3.5 million offer was matched by the Rams, and he’ll stay in Los Angeles.

Detroit even tried to front-load the contract, offering $2.1 million in first-year guarantees, per Dave Birkett, but it just didn’t work out.

“You try to structure a deal that might be hard for them to do, but you really don’t know,” Quinn said according to the Detroit News. “Because you might think you know their situation looking at a piece of paper, but they have other things going on behind the scenes they can move around. So we took a shot at it, it didn’t work out.”

4. Quinn doesn’t buy NFL agent claim that free agents hate Detroit

A few weeks ago, MMQB dropped an eye-opening survey of NFL agents that concluded Detroit was one of the least-preferred destination for players. Quinn said he saw the article, but he isn’t buying it one bit.

“I don’t believe it,” Quinn said per MLive. “You can ask our players what they think about it. Guys we targeted, they wanted to come to Detroit. So I feel good about that.”

That seems to be consistent with what the players were saying, too. Andrew Adams said he got chills speaking to head coach Matt Patricia. Jesse James said he talked to friends that actually encouraged him to go to Detroit and play for Patricia.

Are there players that didn’t come to Detroit—or won’t be coming back to Detroit—because of their dislike of Patricia or the Lions organization? Probably, but Quinn doesn’t believe it’s an out-of-proportion disadvantage.

5. “Hard Knocks” is still up in the air

The Lions have made it very apparent they have no interest in hosting HBO documentary series “Hard Knocks.” Unfortunately for Quinn and company, due to NFL rules they will not be able to decline should they be chosen as this year’s subject.

However, the team still has no indications whether they’ll be featured:

Expect a decision for the show around mid-May.