The Lions have David Montgomery's replacement on the roster already

Mike Payton discusses the plans for David Montgomery's successor and alludes that he's already on the Detroit Lions roster.

Transcript

00:00One of the Lions' biggest offseason needs was that safety, and the Lions actually have a guy

00:04on their roster right now who played safety very well in college, but he'll probably never do that

00:11for the Lions. Let's talk about it. I'm Mike Payne from A to Z Sports Detroit. Today we're going to

00:18talk about why Sione Vocky, despite being a pretty solid safety at Utah, will never play safety for

00:25the Lions, or probably will never play safety for the Lions. Going into the 2024 NFL Draft, at the

00:31Combine, we talked with Sione Vocky, this guy, this versatile three-way possibility could play on

00:38defense, offense, special teams, just like the personality, the work ethic, it just made so much

00:43sense that the Lions were going to draft this guy. The expectation when they picked him was, well,

00:49he will eventually, he will do that three-way thing. He'll play all three phases of the game,

00:54maybe not start at any one of them necessarily, but just kind of come onto the field and play

01:00whenever is needed. Right after the draft, Brad Holmes, Lions GM, pretty much kind of told us

01:07what the Lions really wanted to do with him. Here's what Brad Holmes said. We have some options

01:11there, but we know he could play safety. We know he could do that, but the vision is we're so intrigued

01:16by the running back stuff, especially because he hadn't been majoring in it. So it's like, how far can

01:22this thing go if he's actually majoring in this one room? So that's going to be the vision. So

01:27there it is. I mean, that's the vision. That's what they want out of Sione Vocky. They want him to be

01:32a running back. It's really simple. Obviously, special teams guy as well, and he did really well

01:37at that last year, but they want him to be a running back, and more so, they probably want him

01:43to be the running back that eventually replaces David Montgomery, which I know every Lions fan loves

01:49this guy, and I love him too, but the fact of the matter is, it's not too far off. The way that

01:53they organized Montgomery's contract, it certainly gives him a few outs after the 2025 season. They

02:00could pretty much do anything they want. He has no guaranteed money left on his deal. If they want

02:05to move off of him early, they can. If he has a bad year this year, which I don't think he will,

02:10they could be free of his contract very soon, and Vocky could be in that space.

02:16Now, obviously, we didn't get to see a whole lot of Vocky playing running back in 2024 because the

02:22Lions would usually put him out there during mop-up games when they were just beating the

02:27heck out of somebody, or we saw him in the preseason. Well, I think that'll probably change

02:32in 2025. I think we'll see a lot more Vocky on the field now that he has a year under his belt of

02:38actually being an NFL running back, which, like Holmes said, this wasn't something that he majored

02:44in in college. Utah just needed a running back because they had some injuries, and Vocky was

02:50there to fill in. So he just accidentally found himself as an NFL running back. Now, I don't know

02:58if push comes to shove, and if Brian Branch, and Kirby Joseph, and Avante Maddox, who we think is

03:04going to be the Lions' third safety, and Dan Jackson, and Lauren Strickland, and Morris Norris,

03:09if all these guys somehow get hurt, then maybe they'll throw Sione Vocky in as a safety.

03:16But the reality is, this guy's a running back. He's going to be a running back going forward,

03:21and he could be the running back of the Lions' future. And I personally can't wait to see where

03:28that goes. And we're going to see this summer how much they really want to use him and whether

03:35or not he can kind of overtake Craig Reynolds. And if he can, I think he'll be the Lions' third

03:41running back this season, and we'll see what he can do. Until then, we'll see you guys next time.