Holmes will not put a date on it
Brad Holmes said the words Detroit wanted to hear this morning, then took the timeline away. Both safeties are coming back this season. When either one actually plays a game, the general manager could not say.
Kerby Joseph and Brian Branch went onto the reserve/physically unable to perform list on Sunday. That designation costs them the first four games. Neither practised in training camp. Neither appeared in the preseason.
Holmes described both men as present, rehabbing and working hard, and repeated that he could not offer a timeline. The hope, he said, is to have them back soon.
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Four games without the safety pairing
The arithmetic is fixed. New Orleans on September 13, then Buffalo, the New York Jets and Carolina. The earliest either man can play is Week 5 at Arizona on October 11.
Detroit will spend that month without the two players who defined the back end of the defence. Joseph, 25, was a first-team All-Pro in 2024 and has 20 interceptions in 55 games since the Lions took him in the third round in 2022. Last season ended after six starts when a chronic knee problem shut him down, with 18 tackles and three picks on the sheet.
Branch, 24, tore his Achilles in Week 14. He had 75 tackles and 2.5 sacks in 12 starts before that. A Pro Bowler in 2024, he has 258 tackles, 4.5 sacks and seven interceptions across 43 games since Detroit drafted him in the second round in 2023.
What the club is actually risking
An Achilles and a chronic knee are different problems on different recovery curves, which is part of why Holmes refuses to name a date. Achilles ruptures typically swallow the better part of a year. Chronic knee trouble can settle or linger with no warning attached.
The schedule does not soften while Detroit waits. Buffalo and the Jets inside the opening month is a hard way to break in replacements, and a secondary missing an All-Pro and a Pro Bowler is a secondary that opponents will test in the first quarter.
Week 5 is the first date anybody can circle. Holmes would not circle it.
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