closed its positional rankings on Thursday with safeties, and the Detroit Lions landed two players in the top 10: Brian Branch at No. 4 and Kerby Joseph at No. 9. It was another reminder that Detroit still has one of the league’s most respected safety duos, even if neither player is at full strength right now.
Branch and Joseph were also near the top of last year’s list, when they went No. 2 and No. 5, respectively. This year’s vote came from NFL executives, coaches and scouts, and it keeps the Lions in a rare spot: a defense with two safeties that are commonly believed to belong among the NFL’s best.
For Branch, the ranking arrives while he works back from a torn Achilles suffered in early December. He is expected to miss at least the first month of the season, which makes the No. 4 placement more a measure of belief in his level than a snapshot of what Detroit will have on the field when the games start.
Joseph’s case is harder to read. He is dealing with a knee injury that Dan Campbell said is not “necessarily going away, but I think you do the best you can to manage it.” Detroit shelved him this spring to delay irritation until it became necessary, and Campbell said he does not know how the knee will react once Joseph returns to football action. That uncertainty matters because the Lions have been willing to treat the injury as a manage-and-wait problem, not a clean fix.
That is where the ranking story stops being tidy. Detroit can point to two top-10 safeties, but it may not get both at full speed at the same time, and the gap between recognition and availability is what will shape the season. Campbell said the team has done everything it can to this point, and that it is trying not to push Joseph until it absolutely has to because once that happens, the Lions will know one way or another.
The longer view is even sharper. If Joseph’s career is genuinely in jeopardy, Detroit may eventually look at getting out of his deal before a $16.6 million option bonus arrives in 2027. For now, though, the ranking stands as the cleanest answer: the Lions still have two highly regarded safeties, but the real test begins when Branch gets back and Joseph’s knee has to hold up under live contact.
