Dan Campbell met with local media at the league meetings in Palm Beach, Florida, on Tuesday, and he talked about a number of things, from a potential position change for Giovanni Manu to wanting to get younger at receiver.
He spoke for about 30 minutes, and the guy who kept coming up over and over again was new Lions linebacker Grant Stuard. You really got the feeling that he liked this guy a lot.
"Stuard can do it all, man, you know, he's a guy that's been counted out but could just continues to make plays in this league. He's a dynamic special teams player, in my opinion. And he can play defense." Campbell said. One of the reasons we brought in Stuard, man he flies under the radar. This guy's an unbelievable special-teams player, and he can play defense too. And maybe offense."
Well, there's an interesting little nugget at the end. We already picked Stuard to be the Lions breakout free agent signing in 2025, but if he adds fullback to his repertoire, that's only going to increase the odds that he does breakout.
The Lions have already had a linebacker work at fullback before, when Malcolm Rodriguez did it in 2023, so you know that the Lions have a plan for how to make this move.
Stuard does have some history at running back. He played a little bit there in college at Houston when there was a blowout taking place. Perhaps the Lions look to use Stuard in the same way. Either that or they want to open up some holes.
Campbell also made it a point to say multiple times that while Stuard is a good special teams player, he's going to play on defense too. We don't yet know how much we'll see him out there, but do expect to see him. He's a Dan Campbell guy all the way.
