Brad Holmes made good on his word.
The Detroit Lions re-signed rookie defensive end Ahmed Hassanein to their practice squad Monday, Nov. 10, about two months after they waived him with an injury settlement at the NFL’s August roster-cut deadline.
A sixth-round pick out of Boise State, Hassanein suffered a pectoral injury in a preseason game against the Miami Dolphins.
The Lions opted to waive Hassanein with an injury settlement rather than place him on injured reserve in order to allow him to get practice experience this fall.
Had the Lions placed him on IR at the time of his injury, Hassanein would have been out for the season.
The Lions also could have placed Hassanein on IR at the roster deadline, but teams are allowed just eight return-to-practice spots a year off IR, and they wanted to save those for the season.
The Lions used one IR-return spot on safety Daniel Thomas last week, and hope to activate Marcus Davenport, D.J. Reed, Khalil Dorsey, Christian Mahogany and Gio Manu later this year.
Holmes, the Lions general manager, said in August he intended to re-sign Hassanein once he was healthy and the terms of his injury settlement expired. Teams have to wait three weeks after the completion of an injury settlement to re-sign their own players.
“There’s multiple avenues we could have went with that one,” Holmes said. “What we wanted to do is what is going to be the best path for him to get him back to the practice field when he’s healthy. And the injury settlement was the way to go, especially him specifically with where he was at in his football career.”
Hassanein had 24 sacks in four college seasons at Boise State and was considered a developmental player in the draft.
Dave Birkett covers the Lions for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Bluesky, X and Instagram at @davebirkett.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Lions re-sign 6th-round pick Ahmed Hassanein to practice squad
