Lions trade former #1 OL Tomlinson to 49ers for future 5th … Detroit has traded OG Laken Tomlinson to San Francisco for what is being reported as a 5th round pick in 2019. Tomlinson, the former Duke All-American was the Lions first round pick in 2015 and while he started 24 of the 32 games over the past couple of seasons he never really lived up to the pre-draft hype and wasn’t a lock to even make the Lions’ roster this year. And the whole sequence is just another reminder of just what a crapshoot the NFL draft is. Indeed, prior to the draft that year, everybody in the NFL scouting and draft guru communities really liked Tomlinson – and we really mean everybody and really liked! But the pick didn’t work out. The fact is that nobody knows whether a guy can play in the NFL until he actually steps onto the field and plays against pros. Nobody. The reality is that every team in the league just makes the best choices they can and then crosses their fingers. The teams that get lucky and hit on more picks than misses are called geniuses and the guys that have more than their share of misses get fired. Bottom line, though, is that its 99% luck and the rest is pure chance.
