Practically correcting a mistake by his primary publication, Pro Football Focus’ Sam Monson has identified Brian Branch as an under the radar player.
"This guy is just a superstar."@PFF_Sam & @PFF_Steve show love to some under the radar studs in the NFC North 👇 pic.twitter.com/T23L3RgCVy
— The 33rd Team (@The33rdTeamFB) May 25, 2024
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If you were to call the Detroit Lions’ most underrated or undervalued player is, whichever title you like, quarterback Jared Goff is the default answer and you wouldn’t be wrong. But it’s also fair to say he isn’t the only Lions’ player who falls below the radar for a lot of people, especially given the team’s success last season.
When Pro Football Focus made their list of the top-25 players in the NFL under the age of 25 entering the 2024 season, five Lions made the list (just one other team had more than two). But there was at least one glaring snub, and PFF’s own date showed it.
Brian Branch, functioning as the Lions’ slot corner during his rookie season last year, was PFF’s 14th-ranked cornerback with a 78.9 overall grade. His 83.9 run defense grade was sixth-best at the position, and his 77.7 coverage grade was in the top 25. Being a slot corner/safety certainly hampered him to make the “top-25 under 25” compared to others who play more glamorous positions.
Pro Football Focus analyst nearly retcons Brian Branch young players’ snub
Working for The 33rd Team on a series looking the most under appreciated players on each team, grouped by division, PFF’s Steve Palazollo and Sam Monson took a run at the NFC North.
Monson named Branch as the most undervalued player for the Lions. The part on Branch runs from roughly the 33-second mark through around the 1:03 mark of the video.
“I think Brian Branch is an utterly undervalued player. Safety, slot corner, do-it-all at Alabama in college. I think if he ran a faster 40 time, we would be talking about this guy as a top-10 prospect, top-10 player, heading into the NFL. Hit the ground running, the Lions said ‘you are our slot corner’, he goes out there and absolutely dominates in Year 1, precisely the way he did in college. This guy is a superstar player, and doesn’t get the accolades he deserved for being precisely that.”
If they didn’t know based on what he performed at a high profile school like Alabama, Lions’ opponents and the rest of the league got a close-up look at how talented Branch is during his rookie season. That he slid to the second round as he did, based on things that have nothing to do with playing football, was another bit of good recent draft fortune for the Lions.
