By Moses Joshua 
As the NFL’s annual reset looms, Ray Agnew’s blend of experience, leadership, and culture-building is turning heads well beyond Detroit.
A Quiet Power Broker in the Motor City
Every offseason brings a familiar churn across the league. Coaches are reshuffled, rosters are stripped down and rebuilt, and struggling franchises begin the search for new leadership at the top. This year, one name keeps surfacing in those early front-office conversations — Ray Agnew.
The Detroit Lions’ assistant general manager isn’t just “on the radar.” According to Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer, Agnew is in the group of candidates who are closing in on a full-time GM opportunity.
“Agnew’s been a big brother to a lot of folks in the business, and that probably foreshadows the problem he’s had pursuing a job—he’s 58 years old,” Breer said. “He was a player, a team pastor, a player development director and then a pro scouting director over the last 35 years, and has a great feel for what a team needs and how a culture is built.”
That résumé doesn’t belong to someone chasing relevance. It belongs to someone who’s quietly shaped winning teams from the inside.
A Career That Touches Every Corner of the Game
Agnew’s football life reads less like a job history and more like a blueprint for leadership.
Over more than three decades, he’s served as:
- Former NFL player
- Team pastor
- Player development director
- Director of pro scouting
- Assistant general manager
Before Detroit, he spent four seasons with the Los Angeles Rams as director of pro personnel, helping assemble the core that would later lift the Lombardi Trophy. When Brad Holmes took the Lions’ GM role in 2021, Agnew followed — and together they began one of the most dramatic turnarounds in franchise history.
Back-to-back NFC North titles.
A 15-2 season, the most wins Detroit has ever recorded.
Multiple playoff victories in 2023 — the franchise’s first since 1957.
An NFC Championship Game appearance.
These aren’t coincidences. They’re the byproduct of alignment between scouting, culture, and leadership — areas Agnew has spent a lifetime mastering.
Why the Calls Haven’t Come — Yet
The only real hesitation surrounding Agnew’s candidacy appears to be age. At 58, he isn’t the “next young analytics wunderkind” some ownership groups chase. But Breer made it clear that this may be short-sighted.
“If you can get around that, hiring Agnew would mean bringing aboard a guy who has experience in a lot of different ways,” Breer said. “Given what Detroit’s built, there should, at some point, be an uptick in interest in him.”
In a league where stability is rare and culture is often an afterthought, Agnew represents something different — a steady hand with a holistic understanding of how a franchise actually works.
What It Means for Detroit
Success always comes with a price. The Lions have already seen coaches and assistants poached as their reputation grows, and the front office won’t be immune forever.
Agnew isn’t campaigning for a promotion. But teams in need of credibility, structure, and instant respect are watching closely. Eventually, one of them will decide that experience matters more than optics.
Until that moment arrives, Detroit continues to benefit from his influence — a leader who helped build the foundation for this era of Lions football.
But the league is circling now.
And Ray Agnew’s long-awaited shot at running his own franchise may finally be within reach.