Detroit Lions OTA Day 1 photos suggest potential offensive line shakeup

This early in the offseason, it’s not uncommon for teams to test out players at multiple positions, not only to cover their bases in case of injury, but to see if certain players are capable of a position change.

So it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that we saw some offensive line shakeup in the Detroit Lions’ photos of Day 1 of Organized Team Activities.

There were a few notable changes in position captured in Monday’s photo gallery. First, it appears that Lions center Graham Glasgow got at least some playing time at Detroit’s right guard vacancy (per Photo 12). Frank Ragnow was all over the place. It looks like he also took some reps at right guard (Photo 14) and a bunch at center (Photos 35, 43, 68). Ragnow played center in college, but played exclusively at left guard last season.

Of course, it’s important not to read too much into these developments. Earlier in the year, head coach Matt Patricia specifically told us he was going to mix and match when asked about second-year offensive tackle Tyrell Crosby.

“The game’s a little bit different inside than it is outside for Crosby, so some of those situations we’re going to have to see if he can do that, but we’ll do that with all of those guys,” Patricia said back in March. “There will be a constant flux of positional—I don’t want to call them situations—where we’re just seeing what they can do, but we want to put our guys in as many possible situations that we can.”

Still, this is something to keep an eye on throughout all of OTAs. We’ve all assumed the Lions needed to fill their right guard position, but there’s a chance Detroit moves some of their chess pieces around, especially considering all of the versatile pieces they have.

Oh, and as a little bonus, the Lions did have a Pro Bowl right guard in attendance on Monday. T.J. Lang was apparently cutting is up with Patricia.