allen park — It seems like just yesterday that Malcolm Rodriguez arrived on the Detroit Lions’ practice field for his first NFL training camp, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, on the verge of earning a starting job as a sixth-round pick and becoming the star of HBO’s “Hard Knocks” series.
“It’s crazy how fast things are moving,” Rodriguez said Monday after signing a new one-year contract to stay in Detroit for a fifth NFL season.
Linebacker Malcolm Rodriguez signed a one-year contract with the Lions.
Less than four years later, Rodriguez, who turns 27 later this month, hopes to have a similar trajectory to his rookie season when he returns to training camp this summer, where he will have a full, healthy offseason for the first time since 2024.
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As he developed into his second and third years with the team, Rodriguez found the starting guard job passing him by. The team drafted Jack Campbell, now a first-team All-Pro selection, and gave Derrick Barnes, who was drafted a year before Rodriguez, a three-year, $25.5 million contract. Meanwhile, Alex Anzalone developed into one of the league’s best defensive linemen.
During the 2024 season, Rodriguez once again became an important part of the roster, filling in for a plethora of injured players, but his season was ended by a torn ACL suffered on Thanksgiving Day against the Chicago Bears.
For players with ACL injuries, the consensus is that they won’t feel like themselves for much of their first season back, especially a player like Rodriguez who started to emerge in the middle of the season. He returned to the lineup on November 23 (Week 12 of the 2025 season) and played 72 defensive snaps and played primarily on special teams the remainder of the time (160 snaps).
Rodriguez continued to experience knee stiffness at the start of the offseason, which led to him taking an important break that seemed to allow him to prepare before important workouts.
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“This is new for me, coming off an ACL, never had an injury like this before, so it’s going to take some getting used to,” Rodriguez said. “… (People) told me it was going to be a little unusual coming back for the first time, so now to come back and have a full offseason, it’s been over a year and a half, so it feels like things are getting back to normal.”
With linebacker and longtime captain Alex Anzalone departing in free agency, the opportunity to compete for the starting job is firmly in place. He just has to go out there and accept it.
“This is a big opportunity,” Rodriguez said Monday as she stood at the podium holding her young daughter. “I’m excited for Alex and his family…I’m going to have the same mentality coming in that I had when I first got here. It’s always competitive here, so give it your best and see what happens.”
At the very least, Rodriguez will have the trust of defensive coordinator Kelvin Shepard, who served as position coach during Rodriguez’s first three seasons and repeatedly demonstrated Rodriguez’s ability as a starting linebacker.
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Rodriguez’s consistent run-stopping ability should be enough to earn him a significant spot in the rotation, even if he doesn’t win the starting job outright.
“I pride myself on my run defense, stopping the run game,” Rodriguez said. “…It would be nice to be fully healthy and be able to…fly around and do my thing.”
nbianchi@detroitnews.com
@nolanbianchi
This article originally appeared in The Detroit News: Malcolm Rodriguez gets chance to start with Detroit Lions