Martin Mayhew Knows Allen Park's Walls Have Ears

There was an awful lot of media snickering being heard after Martin Mayhew and Tom Lewand held their mutual introductory press conference.  From Lewand getting players' names horribly wrong, to Mayhew claiming he was the best one to fix Millen's mistakes because he was Millen's top assistant when he made them . . . well, it wasn't well recieved.  But buried in the middle of that press conference was an interesting quote from Mr. Mayhew about their draft strategy:

"I'll speak on that a little bit, but let me preface that - talking about that - by saying that I think where we've hurt ourselves in the past is by talking too much. I've been there prior to the draft and I've seen us get out there and talk about our needs and what kind of players that we're looking for and I've seen you guys and others hone in on what our needs are. I read the clips for every NFL team 365 days a year; I read everybody's clips and I read what's going on. And I'm doing that looking for a competitive edge and what I don't want to do is be the person that gives somebody else a competitive edge on us. So I'll talk a little bit about that, but I won't get into a lot of detail about what our needs our and what direction that we plan on going."

Well he sure wasn't whistling Dixie.  According to Tom Kowalski (during a radio interview on WDFN), there's been an unprecedented "information lockdown" in Allen Park.   It seems to be true; the only real leads we have on the coaching search are form other team's beat writers reporting on official requests for interview permission.  Chris Mortensen threw out the names Jim Schwartz and Mike Mularkey as names to watch--and ESPN trumped that up into "Mort reports Schwartz and Mularkey are #1 and #2 in Lions coaching search", which isn't what he really said at all.

Well, today we got quite the interesting bombshell from NFL.com's Adam Schefter: after hearing from multiple sources on Monday that Cowboys OC Jason Garrett had refused the Lions' request for an interview, he interviewed yesterday.  Nobody knows where, or when, or for how long, but Garrett did sit down and interview with Lions brass.

The thing that's interesting to me is not that Garrett interviewed; the interesting thing is that the Lions not only kept it completely secret, but that some 'insiders' were kept so far in the dark that they started chirping that it wasn't going to happen--when it fact it already had.  There are two ways to look at this:

1) The Detroit Lions have been taken over by two extremely competent men on the upswing of their careers, that have been buried underneath incompetent leadership for years.  They have wrested control of the franchise, plugged the media leaks, and are quietly interviewing all of the consensus top candidates, en route to making a very solid hire.

2) The Detroit Lions have been taken over by two little kids who, once King Daddy gave them the keys to the castle, pulled up the drawbridge--and are now running up and down the halls wearing pieces of knight's armor over their PJs, knocking over statues, and drawing moustaches on the paintings.

Meanwhile, all interested parties can merely gather outside Allen Park and wait for a sign.

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