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