The Detroit Lions are a professional American football team based in Detroit, Michigan. The Lions compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the North Division of the National Football Conference. The franchise was founded in Portsmouth, Ohio, as the Portsmouth Spartans and joined the NFL on July 12, 1930. After being purchased by George A. Richards in 1934, the franchise was relocated to Detroit and renamed to the Detroit Lions in reference to the city's Major League Baseball franchise, the Detroit Tigers. The team plays its home games at Ford Field in Downtown Detroit.
The NFL draft, officially known as the "NFL Annual Player Selection Meeting", is an annual event which serves as the league's most common source of player recruitment. The draft order is determined based on the previous season's standings; the teams with the worst win–loss records receive the earliest picks. Teams that qualified for the NFL playoffs select after non-qualifiers, and their order depends on how far they advanced, using their regular season record as a tie-breaker. The final two selections in the first round are reserved for the Super Bowl runner-up and champion. Draft picks are tradable and players or other picks can be acquired with them.
In 1970, the Lions took part in the first modern NFL draft after the completion of the AFL–NFL merger. With the nineteenth pick of the first round of that draft, Steve Owens, a running back out of Oklahoma University, became the Lions' first modern draft selection. In addition to the annual draft, the Lions participated in the 1984 NFL supplemental draft. This supplemental draft occurred after the formation of the United States Football League (USFL), with the primary purpose of selecting players that had already signed with a USFL team in a separate process from the annual draft. The Canadian Football League (CFL) was also included in this supplemental draft. In addition to the 1984 supplemental draft, the NFL has hosted an annual supplemental draft since 1977 for players who had circumstances affect their eligibility for the NFL draft. The Lions have only selected a player once in a supplemental draft, taking Kevin Robinson in the ninth round in 1982. Two players drafted by the Lions since 1970 have been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame: Barry Sanders and Calvin Johnson. The Lions have taken part in every modern NFL draft since 1970, doing so most recently in the 2024 NFL draft, where they drafted six players.
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1970 draft
1971 draft
1972 draft
1973 draft
1974 draft
1975 draft
1976 draft
1977 draft
1978 draft
1979 draft
1980 draft
1981 draft
1982 draft
Supplemental draft pick
Annual draft picks
1983 draft
1984 draft
1984 NFL supplemental draft
1985 draft
1986 draft
1987 draft
1988 draft
1989 draft
1990 draft
1991 draft
1992 draft
1993 draft
1994 draft
1995 draft
1996 draft
1997 draft
1998 draft
1999 draft
2000 draft
2001 draft
2002 draft
2003 draft
2004 draft
2005 draft
2006 draft
2007 draft
2008 draft
2009 draft
2010 draft
2011 draft
2012 draft
2013 draft
2014 draft
2015 draft
2016 draft
2017 draft
2018 draft
2019 draft
2020 draft
2021 draft
2022 draft
2023 draft
2024 draft
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