After what seemed like months of hand wringing and concern from fans that the Detroit Lions wouldn’t sign anybody (it was a few hours), news broke of the first major signing for 2020’s free agency and it was... Halapoulivaati Vaitai—an offensive tackle who wasn’t even starting for the Eagles? That can’t be right.

The mathematician in me notes his low snap count, only 541 snaps in 2019 for, and wonders what they could have seen to sign him to a starter contract. The analytics guy in me noted his very poor PFF grade from 2017-2018—brushing aside his very good grade from 2019 for the moment because pessimism rules. He doesn’t even have an elite athletic profile! I should hate this signing!

And yet, I don’t. Quite the opposite. Let’s dig into this.

If you’re one of those fans that hates every move the team makes you can find comfort in how badly Pro Football Focus thinks of this signing. If you’re a silver linings kind of guy you can read about how the folks over at Bleeding Green Nation feel pretty good that one of their guys found a new home. Why couldn’t they have just used that money (Well, more of that money) and pay Graham Glasgow? Did this team just seriously spend 10 million per season on a guy who’s only started four games over the past two seasons and only 20 games ever?

I am not much of a salesman. I just wanted to cover most of the basic bases as quickly as possible. So now that we’ve swept past those, let’s take a look at what this signing actually means and how it helps the team, rather than quibble over things that don’t mean anything now that the deal is happening and isn’t just a theory.

Money

First off, let’s talk about that contract. If you’ve followed the NFL for any period of time, you know not to take the first reported numbers as anything other than a guideline. A deal of $10 million per, if we take the contract at its face value alone, would put Vaitai’s deal at around 20th for offensive tackles. That sounds about right as Vaitai ranked 25th among tackles with at least 450 snaps (per PFF), one spot above Andrew Whitworth and only three spots below Taylor Lewan (both left tackles, Lewan the top paid prior to this off-season). So the money, as much as people will grumble about it, is about right. Like previous Bob Quinn deals, it’s pretty standard “at-market” cost for a starting tackle.

Talent

Which brings us to the “Starting Tackle” part of this conversation. Though Vaitai started 10 regular season games and three playoff games during the Philadelphia Eagles’ Super Bowl season, he has only started five games since (including their 2019 playoff loss). In 2019, he gave up only two sacks in over 330 pass blocking snaps and, more importantly for this scheme, had one of the highest run blocking grades on the season. His game isn’t perfect— you wouldn’t have any rational person tell you it was—but the reason he wasn’t starting was more about Jason Peters and Lane Johnson than Halapoulivaati Vaitai.

Scheme fit

The main reason I’m excited about this signing isn’t because I’m blindly following my team (just look at my opinions on several of their coaching hires or previous draft picks if you question objectivity), but because I see a very clear fit between what the team has shown they want to do schematically and the player. Vaitai is one of the best run blocking tackles in the league, and the Lions want to run the football down teams’ throats. They haven’t been as successful doing so ,and their offense struggled. So it makes sense they’d try to rectify that.

While Vaitai’s pass protection has been suspect—in large part due to his lack of lateral agility to deal with speedier rushers—that’s something the team found ways to mitigate in 2019 despite extremely poor play at the right tackle position. It’s an issue, but it’s one they’ve already show an adeptness at limiting the impact of.

I don’t expect Vaitai to be the last signing the Detroit Lions make in 2020, it’s just the first. The team has a lot of work to do to get this thing turned around, but signing a player to a market=level contract who fits what you’re trying to do offensively is certainly not a bad place to start. We’ve got months to go before we’re able to even know what jersey numbers Vaitai wears, so you’ve got time to practice pronouncing his name before the next time we see the Lions offensive line in pads. It’s nice to know that they’ve got three of five starters, though, with only two left to go before the line is complete.