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The Detroit Lions enter the offseason program with multiple spots on the starting offensive line unknown. Their mission isn’t.

“We have to be more aggressive,” guard Larry Warford said Monday, via Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press. “We can’t be as technical as we [tried to be last year]. The biggest thing is we tried to break everything down, we tried to focus on a bunch of stuff at once, down to the smallest detail. With offensive line play, that’s cool but at the end of the day you have to whoop somebody’s ass and we weren’t necessarily being the players that we were trained to be from the start.”

Warford added that the offensive line was “somewhat robotic” in 2014. Two of the five starters from that “somewhat robotic” line, Dominic Raiola and Rob Sims, won’t be around in 2015. But it sounds as if Raiola and Sims weren’t the “somewhat robotic” ones.

“It sucks that they’re gone. They’re huge, huge, huge personalities in the room,” Warford said. “That’s 14 years with Dom and what is it like [nine] for Sims? It sucks that they’re gone ’cause they come from a different era in football and that era was, mentally they were stupid tough. It sucks that we don’t have that type of leadership with us, but the biggest thing is carrying on what they taught us and the mentality that they brought in, take it upon ourselves to instill that mentality in the room.”

So how will they do that?

“[Offensive line coach Jeremiah Washburn], first thing he said was, ‘We’re coming off the ball,'” Warford explained regarding the opening meeting of the year with his position coach. “‘We’re running off the ball.’ There’s nothing else to that. We’re going to set the pocket and run off the ball. He said that today. That’s what it has to be. We’re not going to focus every little step. You have to work that framework into what you can do personally. Everybody has as different skill set and they have to make it work for them. That’s the biggest thing. It’s not going to be too chaotic or whatever, but we’re going to play.”

Travis Swanson takes over for Raiola at center and Warford plays right guard. The other 60 percent of the starting offensive line spots are up in the air. The guys most likely to win those jobs could be the guys who demonstrate the greatest ability to whoop some ass.