Note: This is an opinion piece by MLive.com’s Nate Atkins.

ALLEN PARK -- Two years ago, the Lions set out to find an outside cornerback to pair with Darius Slay. To land the right wingman to a finesse player who lives on recovery speed, they worked off a list of traits: size, physicality, toughness and tackling technique, all while coming with his own level of ball skills. They cared less for how springy fast he was.

The search took them to hot pro day in Florida, where one of the cockiest and accomplished cornerbacks from one of the best college defenses was looking to shed a red flag. Teez Tabor ran a 4.63-second 40-yard dash at the NFL combine, but he thought he was faster than that, until a 4.75 on his second attempt showed him otherwise. Now, that red flag was becoming a scarlet letter in the eyes of teams that treat speed in the secondary as a limited resource to survival.

The Lions didn’t see it that way. Again, speed was not the skill they most coveted. Tabor seemed to have everything else, and he played in the Southeastern Conference on those legs, and so Bob Quinn flew back to Allen Park and proceeded to watch more film on him than any other prospect he has ever scouted.

Quinn was chasing a self-fulfilling prophecy. He wanted Tabor to work so badly that he pored over 14 game tapes until he saw enough plays of him running in range of SEC wideouts that he could still make him a priority. Such time invested created a bias about one player nobody else in the league seemed to match.

That is what led to the Lions taking Tabor in the second round of the 2017 draft, two full rounds ahead of where I heard other teams considered him a possibility. That is partly what led to them picking eighth overall after Tabor’s first season as a starter.

It is also, interestingly enough, what led to the Lions taking the cornerback they did in this year’s draft. Matt Patricia flew to Penn State shortly before the combine and gathered info on a new lanky cornerback. Two weeks later, they met formally with 6-foot-2-inch Amani Oruwariye and then watched with everyone else as he ran a 4.47-second 40 that was, at least, not a red flag. They watched his broad jump and his field drills, which showcased a stiffness that could cost him the recovery speed to gamble like Slay possesses.

They looked over his loaded resume of eight interceptions, 20 pass deflections and two All-Big Ten Conference team selections, the kind of sample size to make them feel good about how he plays with his size and athleticism.

What they didn’t see was first- or second-round talent. Nor did other teams. That’s how he started to fall as other cornerbacks came off the board on Day 2, and then so many teams had already drafted cornerbacks that he was still there in the fifth round, when the Lions finally pounced.

Taken 146th overall, Oruwariye looks like one of the steals in the draft. NFL.com’s Lance Zierlein gave him a Round 3 grade, and Bleacher Report’s Matt Miller mocked him at the start of the fourth round. I saw in him a third-round player with a high floor due to his character, size and experience, as well as my belief that ball skills translate to the NFL.

Nobody will remember or care about these projections if Oruwariye doesn’t amount to much. Odds are he will be a better pro than Tabor right now because that bar is so low, but Quinn’s job is ultimately to find a good partner for Slay. He’ll only get so many cracks at it.

But he gave himself an immensely better chance at everything he’s trying to accomplish by landing Oruwariye in the fifth rather than the second. The Lions added a linebacker, a safety and an edge defender before they took a cornerback who has a good chance to start this year. That’s the opportunity cost we can evaluate and why the Tabor pick was doomed almost regardless of how he performed.

To ramp up the pressure on a young player lacking the physical tools to accomplish a job built largely on confidence was Quinn’s biggest draft mistake yet. This is the human reality that gets lost in hours of film study trying so hard to be right.

Quinn hasn’t yet shed his desire to play the second round on his terms, as he showed in drafting Hawaii linebacker Jahlani Tavai, a player coming off an injury whose projections were all over the map. He’s made it clear he doesn’t care for how picks look to fans right after he makes them, and he probably shouldn’t.

But a seven-round draft is a challenge of picking spots, playing percentages and maximizing chances to hit for a higher batting average. The ability to read a room on how a 40 time affects a player’s stock and whether other teams’ concerns should also be your concerns can enhance the strategy and awareness of the short and long term.

Quinn did that with Oruwariye, his fifth selection of the draft. He didn’t need to watch more film on him than any other prospect. He just had to learn from his mistakes of the past.