Ryan Grant is upended in a 2009 game against the Indianapolis Colts. Grant, a player without a team, has been working out with the Detroit Lions. Raymond T. Rivard photograph.
In the middle of August, the Green Bay Packers had found what they hoped was the answer to their pathetic running back situation and the name associated with the answer wasn’t Ryan Grant – it was Cedric Benson.
While the jury is still out and will be out for a while on the Benson experiment, there’s one thing for certain – Ryan Gran will never play another down for the Packers.
Today the news out of the Detroit Lions camp that Grant was working out for the team from the Motor City came as no surprise. In fact, it was about that time that we here at Lombardiave.com speculated that Grant would eventually land a contract with the Lions because of that team’s own lack of a reliable stable of runners.
The real question at this point is whether it will be Grant or Steve Slaton getting the call to become a member of the team. A decision will be made at some point soon and should it be Grant, that too, will not be surprising given the Lions’ near signing of Grant back in early spring. Grant had scheduled a visit to Detroit, but cancelled at the last minute, raising speculation that he may have been headed back to the Packers. That didn’t happen either.
Frankly, I would like to see Grant get picked up by an AFC team and certainly not one as good as the Lions from the Packers’ own division, but it is what it is.
In the meantime, below is a look at the post we wrote way back when about Grant going to Detroit.
Ryan Grant: Is he headed to Detroit?
With the news that Jahvid Best, the Detroit Lions’ best bet for starting back, will not be uniform for the start of the 2012 regular season – he’s been relegated to the physically unable to perform list – is there a former Packer in the team’s future?
Throw in the fact that behind Best for the Lions are perpetual underachiever Kevin Smith and bad boy Mikel Leshoure
and one might think that Ryan Grant might be a possibility.
You might remember that Grant had a visit to Detroit embedded into his GPS in May, but that trip was cancelled for inexplicable reasons. At the time, many thought it was because they believed he was headed back to Green Bay.
That didn’t happen either.
Instead, the Packers decided to go with two backs returning from serious knee injuries – Alex Green and James Starks, as well as second-year man Brandon Saine and rookie undrafted free agent Marc Tyler.
That was all well and good until the wheels in Green Bay started falling off. Saine went down to injury, Green wasn’t quite 100 percent and Starks hasn’t been all the Packers want. In their first preseason game, Tyler looked pretty good, but his stock dropped when he fumbled on the Packers’ final possession as they were attempting to score as the clock was winding down.
Immediately, the thought turned to Grant – he’s the back who knows the system and would be the perfect fit.
But not for Ted Thompson. Instead he went out and got Cedric Benson for a song, clearly looking to move in an entirely new direct, left Grant without a team.
Enter the Lions who have as bad of a situation in their backfield as the Packers. A logical choice for Detroit would be Grant, but no move has been made in that direction.
Could it still happen? Sure. There’s plenty of time to get him into camp and acclimated to their system. Obviously, that wouldn’t be something Packers fans would like to see.
But I wouldn’t be surprised if it did.
