Brad Holmes’ drafting vision all makes sense now.

After all, the Detroit Lions general manager opened his season-ending news conference Monday going so hard on offense there wasn’t room for any defense.

You can call it the James Harden approach. Or maybe Shaq is more appropriate, since he dunked on so many people.

Holmes delivered the most raw, real and passionate news conference of his tenure while calling out a few reporters (yes, including your favorite Free Press sports columnist) over differences in opinion on players. The Lions should have skipped the press passes for this one and handed out Kevlar vests instead.

And I loved every minute of it.

For the record, Holmes kept it 100% professional. He didn’t take any cheap shots and I’m not offended. In fact, I’d give him a standing ovation for his approach. Even if I don’t agree entirely with all of his points, I’ll take a passionate delivery every time over a prosaic presser with pat answers.

As enjoyable as it was watching Holmes repeatedly jump off the top rope and hit reporters over the head with folding chairs, there was a necessary sobering subject that needed to bring up amid Holmes’ offensive barrage: the defense.

Overall, this Lions season was an unqualified success. They made good on all the promise they showed at the end of the 2022 season and delivered even more with a 12-5 record and coming up four points shy of a spot in the Super Bowl after a close loss on the road to the NFC’s top seed.

It was an excellent season by any measure, which means that anything Holmes was asked Monday really amounted to quibbling over small issues.

But small issues are going to be the difference now that the Lions have reached the rarified air of championship-caliber teams. The small issues are going to be the difference between the Lions getting to the NFC title game or getting to the Super Bowl.

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And one of those small issues is the difference between the defense going from being an average defense to a good or great defense. Because if the defense was even just a little better, the Lions should have held on to a 24-7 halftime lead, beaten the San Francisco 49ers and Holmes and I would be in Las Vegas right now. Instead, the Lions lost, 34-31, and if you can’t beat a team after your score 31 points, there’s a problem.

So who’s to blame for the defense’s shortcomings and how does it get better?

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The consensus fans and media that the defense isn’t as good as the offense because the defense doesn’t have as much talent. I think there’s a lot of truth to that idea, which means the discrepancy is Holmes’ fault.

But I also wonder how much of that talent discrepancy is due to coaches not developing the talent Holmes has acquired, which would make it coordinator Aaron Glenn’s fault.

There was no way Holmes was going to blame his coaches — or frankly, himself — for the defense’s struggles. He didn’t even agree with the assertion that there's the talent discrepancy between the defense and offense. Instead, he preferred to take a holistic team view of how the Lions play football in all three phases.

“But I do think that our players on defense played well together,” he said, “and they worked well together and they were a resilient group and I think we have a lot of good starters and we have a lot of guys that have a lot of upside.

“We have a lot of young players on defense. And look, we play an aggressive style. We play an aggressive style. I think there’s no question on our identity. But I don’t really see there’s a big discrepancy of talent. It’s just — we’re just kind of working together. But it’s a total team effort.”

It’s really easy to go back and pick apart any GM’s draft after you’ve seen how things have played out over a season or more. So I’m not going to tell you Holmes should have drafted defensive tackle Jalen Carter instead of Jahmyr Gibbs last year or safety Kyle Hamilton instead of Jameson Williams the year before that.

What I will tell you is that in 2022 the Lions’ finished the season with the NFL’s fourth-ranked offense and the 32nd-ranked defense. Then, in 2023, they only used three of their eight draft picks on defense and at the trade deadline didn’t add anything on defense, when they could have had Montez Sweat, Chase Young or Kevin Byard.

Of course, it’s not all about the draft. In free agency, Holmes added more significant upgrades to the defense, especially in the secondary. There was improvement on defense, especially when Glenn moved to a more blitz-heavy scheme to generate pressure. It led to a significant improvement, though the final tally wasn’t impressive. The Lions finished the season with the NFL’s third-ranked offense and the 19th-ranked defense.

What Holmes indicated Monday was that he prefers depth on defense, rather than top-shelf stars.

“And so there’s a balance when you want to add quality depth,” he said. “And sometimes you might have to add some guys that may not be as high-dollar players.

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“But we have belief in our coaches, in terms of our development of our players and a lot of those guys got better, a lot of those guys got better. So I’m not really concerned about it.”

I hope Holmes takes a good, hard look at the two teams in the Super Bowl on Sunday. They both have top-10 defenses with numerous All-Pros, Pro Bowlers and recognizable stars. This year, it would have been asking a lot for the Lions to win the Super Bowl with Aidan Hutchinson surrounded by a bunch of Cam Suttons, Josh Paschals and Kindle Vildors.

If the pain is still too raw and Holmes can’t bear to watch the Super Bowl, maybe he can at least look back at highlights from right here in Detroit, where Dennis Rodman and Ben Wallace taught us a lot about the importance of playing elite defense.

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Contact Carlos Monarrez: cmonarrez@freepress.com. Follow him @cmonarrez.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Brad Holmes on offense is fun; Detroit Lions GM must focus on defense