Detroit Lions draft picks (1970–present)

The Detroit Lions are a professional American football team based in Detroit, Michigan. The Lions compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the North Division of the National Football Conference. The franchise was founded in Portsmouth, Ohio, as the Portsmouth Spartans and joined the NFL on July 12, 1930. After being purchased by George A. Richards in 1934, the franchise was relocated to Detroit and renamed to the Detroit Lions in reference to the city's Major League Baseball franchise, the Detroit Tigers. The team plays its home games at Ford Field in Downtown Detroit.

The NFL draft, officially known as the "NFL Annual Player Selection Meeting", is an annual event which serves as the league's most common source of player recruitment. The draft order is determined based on the previous season's standings; the teams with the worst win–loss records receive the earliest picks. Teams that qualified for the NFL playoffs select after non-qualifiers, and their order depends on how far they advanced, using their regular season record as a tie-breaker. The final two selections in the first round are reserved for the Super Bowl runner-up and champion. Draft picks are tradable and players or other picks can be acquired with them.

In 1970, the Lions took part in the first modern NFL draft after the completion of the AFL–NFL merger. With the nineteenth pick of the first round of that draft, Steve Owens, a running back out of Oklahoma University, became the Lions' first modern draft selection. In addition to the annual draft, the Lions participated in the 1984 NFL supplemental draft. This supplemental draft occurred after the formation of the United States Football League (USFL), with the primary purpose of selecting players that had already signed with a USFL team in a separate process from the annual draft. The Canadian Football League (CFL) was also included in this supplemental draft. In addition to the 1984 supplemental draft, the NFL has hosted an annual supplemental draft since 1977 for players who had circumstances affect their eligibility for the NFL draft. The Lions have only selected a player once in a supplemental draft, taking Kevin Robinson in the ninth round in 1982. Two players drafted by the Lions since 1970 have been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame: Barry Sanders and Calvin Johnson. The Lions have taken part in every modern NFL draft since 1970, doing so most recently in the 2024 NFL draft, where they drafted six players.