DETROIT -- Dan Miller, the play-by-play man for the Lions, told a great story while hosting a panel with players, coaches and front office personnel at the Detroit Economic Club luncheon on Wednesday afternoon at Ford Field.

Miller said he was supposed to interview coach Matt Patricia and general manager Bob Quinn after the second day of training camp. Patricia wound up having to cancel because something came up, and then Quinn was running late. That also happened to be the day Mike Daniels was released by the Packers. So when Quinn finally arrived, they made small talk about Daniels before going on air.

“We were just shooting the bull as we were getting wired up,” Miller said. “About four hours later, it comes across Twitter, ‘Lions have agreed to terms with Mike Daniels.’ Come to find out, while we were having the conversation asking Bob about Mike Daniels, Mike Daniels was ...”

At this point, Quinn fesses up.

“... in my office,” Quinn said to loud cheers from the audience. “It was pretty hard (not to give it away). I don’t know if my Irish blood, my face was turning red, I don’t know. Good thing the camera wasn’t running at that point.”

Daniels became one of the top pass-rushing defensive tackles in the league during his seven seasons in Green Bay, and made the Pro Bowl in 2017. His 29 sacks are a team record for an interior lineman.

But the Packers made the surprising decision to cut Daniels on the eve of training camp, saving $8.3 million in cap space. He instantly became one of the most valuable commodities on the open market, and 13 teams called him within an hour.

He chose Detroit because of a number of reasons, one of which was the one-year, $8.1 million contract that is nearly fully guaranteed. But Matt Patricia was a big draw too.

“He’s just a genius,” Daniels said after arriving in Lions camp. "He really is, man. He understands the game of football, he knows what it takes, so to be able to play for a coach like that means everything. It means everything. I’m really just trying to be restrained right now, because I’m so excited. If I could do a back flip right now, I’d do one. I’m really excited.”

Daniels did miss all of training camp while tending to a foot injury he suffered last year, but returned to work last week and is on track to be ready for the season opener Sept. 8 against Arizona. And his excitement to be in Detroit hasn’t abated one bit.

“You come into the NFL, you work so hard,” he said at the luncheon on Wednesday. "You just give everything you’ve got every single day. You walk into that building and say, ‘They’re not going to cut me. I’m not going to get cut. I’m not going to get released. I’m going to make it hard for them.' So when it happened, and then I saw I had an opportunity to play for the Lions, I said, ‘Man, I’m glad I got cut.' I’m really excited to be here. Really excited to be here.'

But it seems T.J. Lang also deserves an assist for luring Daniels across the NFC North. The longtime Packers offensive lineman spent the last two years of his career in Detroit, and personally vouched for the team and culture during a recruiting pitch as Daniels hit the market.

“T.J. and I are very similar in how we approach the game of football, and just our general attitude,” Daniels said. "One of the biggest things he told me was, ‘You’re at a place where you fit in.’ And when I say that, I’m saying that we have a lot of alpha-type personalities. A lot of -- not fake tough guys, but real tough guys. You’ve got guys who aren’t afraid to confront one another when things go wrong.

“Everybody legitimately has each other’s best interests (in mind). There’s no petty, girly, behind-the-back stuff. You’ve got a problem with somebody, you handle it. So I really appreciate that. I really appreciate that Coach encourages -- that Bob encourages -- that, hey, we’re a brotherhood. If you can’t be honest with your brother, then you don’t really love him. So that’s one thing T.J. was saying, and that’s one thing I’ve always respected about T.J., was that he was an honest, to-the-point kind of guy. And I kind of modeled myself after him in that way. He said, ‘Mike, you’re finally in the right place, and I’m excited to see how you gel in the locker room.'”

The recruiting pitch apparently worked, because Quinn said he had a feeling Daniels was going to sign quickly after he arrived in Detroit.

“Once he got in the building, he didn’t even want to leave,” Quinn said. “It happened really fast, and I kind of knew at that point we were talking that it was probably going to happen in the next hour or so. And it did. We’re really happy that worked out, and it’s a good position group for us.”

Daniels said he was hurt by Green Bay’s decision to cut him at the outset of camp. Asked about his motivation for the season, he leaned into the mic.

“You’ll see how motivated I am," he said.