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After Monday’s OTAs—which were only observed by the public through a photo gallery and a short highlight reel—it looked like the Detroit Lions may be playing around with the offensive line positions to see what they’ve got.
After Tuesday’s practice, which was available to the media, it looks like this may be a more permanent move for Detroit. During all of the snaps that I observed during Detroit’s two-hour practice, the offensive line for the first-team offense was as followed:
Left tackle: Taylor Decker
Left guard: Kenny Wiggins
Center: Frank Ragnow
Right guard: Graham Glasgow
Right tackle: Rick Wagner
That’s a complete switch around from last year, in which Glasgow was at center, Ragnow was at left guard and Wiggins was on the right side.
The interesting part about this change is that every player already has a fair amount of experience at their “new” position. Glasgow played a fair share of guard in his rookie year (although on the left side). Veteran Kenny Wiggins has plenty of experience at both guard positions. And Frank Ragnow is completely comfortable at center, where he played in college. In fact, Ragnow thinks this transition should be a lot easier than last year, when he had to adjust to guard.
“I think the transition to left guard was a little more difficult, because I hadn’t played it before,” Ragnow admitted. “Center I’ve played before so there’s some experience there.”
And while it’s still way too early to jump to any conclusions about where this offensive line may be come training camp, it is worth noting that in past years, the Lions have stuck with their offensive line formation out of OTAs. Last year when there were questions about where Frank Ragnow would play, he practiced almost exclusively at left guard. When the media had the same questions about Taylor Decker in his rookie season, he was taking reps at left tackle from Day 1.
So this is far from an insignificant update. While I want to reiterate this quote from Matt Patricia back in March:
Important not to read too much into these photos, though.
— Pride of Detroit (@PrideOfDetroit) May 20, 2019
Patricia from 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."
It also appears the Lions may be headed for a pretty significant shakeup on the interior of their offensive line.