I apologize for the lack of content yesterday; I added a thousand words to my CBA post, but it still ain’t close. In the meantime, I’ve lined up a slew of guest articles, including a preseason game preview post for noted Steelers blog Steelers N’At, and a Michigan State season preview for College Football Zealots. Plus, I’m polishing off a couple of long-overdue Leather-Bound Lions posts for Pride of Detroit, and of course submitting my contribution to the Lions Congregation over at Roar of the Lions. Bottom line: I’m doing mad crazy phat writing, but I have nothing for you to read yet. Next couple days are going to be stacked, though. In the meantime:
Also, I really dug Detroit News columnist John Niyo's article on Jon Jansen. As much as I love Jansen’s mind, heart, and resumé, if Jansen can beat out Gosder Cherilus for the starting spot, that bodes ill for Cherilus—and the right side of the line.
Tim Layden, my SI peer and one of the most versatile fine sportswriters in America (the horses, the Olympics, the NFL), has written a book about how the NFL game has gotten as sophisticated as it has: "Blood, Sweat and Chalk (SI Books).'' I am not writing about it here as a favor to Tim, a friend of mine. I am writing about it here because it's one of the most valuable contributions to the understanding of the game we all love to come along in the 26 years I've covered the NFL.
Wow.
For those of you who are fans of the On The DL Podcast, or the quasi-defunct The Sporting Blog, Dan Levy and company are starting a new sports/sports media blog called Press Coverage; I highly recommend it.
4.30, 128: Jason Fox, Miami OT: When the Lions tendered RFA offers to guard Manny Ramirez, guard/center Dylan Gandy, and tackle/guard Daniel Loper, I was surprised. Surely, I figured, with the addition of Rob Sims, and the healthy return of Stephen Peterman, one of those three would be let go. All three had a chance to prove their worth as a starter last season—and none have such unknown upside that they must be kept around, regardless of production. I named a tackle to groom behind Backus, and a center to groom behind Raiola, as two of the Lions' draft needs; I figured either one or the other would be addressed.
We got a sneak preview as to which it would be when the Lions released Loper. As a swing guard/tackle, and no spot for him at guard, he’d have to make the roster as a tackle. Since he didn’t, that left only aging Jon Jansen as a viable OT backup, and his pass protection—never excellent—has degraded to where he can’t start at right tackle anymore. I immediately Tweeted that there was a roster space being carved out for a left tackle. @Reckoner67 asked if I meant Okung, and I replied, quote, “More like a 3rd/4th rndr.” Yeah, Twitter is literate like that.
Sure enough, when the Lions—finally—got back on the clock in the fourth round, they took their developmental tackle; Jason Fox of Miami. Fox is an interesting prospect. He has the prototypical LT frame: 6’-6 7/8”, 303 pounds, and 34.4” arms. He’s got plenty of experience, having started 47 games in 4 years at Miami, third-most in school history. Depending on who you ask, he’s either got very good, or average NFL-level lateral agility (keeping in mind that “average NFL-level” is “very good”). So, with that frame, that athleticism, and that pedigree, why was he there at the bottom of the fourth round?
Jason Fox didn’t start out as a left tackle; in fact, like a lot of premier pass protectors, he started as a tight end prospect. Coming out of North Crowley high school in Forth Worth, TX, Fox had played at tight end until switching to tackle his senior year. Measuring 6’-6 1/2”, and a probably-lanky 255 pounds, Jason Fox was Scout.com’s 25th-best offensive tackle in 2006. Interestingly, Rivals.com had Fox as the #16 tight end in his class; both considered him a four-star prospect. To the University of Miami, though, Fox was strictly a tackle, and he immediately proved them right.
He started the first three games of his true freshman year at right tackle, but switched to left in the third game due to an injury. He spent the rest of the season bouncing between the right and left sides. He was knocked out of the final game of the season with a dislocated elbow, but returned in time to start the MPC Computers Bowl [sheesh]. The coaches graded Fox out at 83%, second-highest on the team, and he was given the team’s highest effort grade. After not allowing a sack from either side all year, he was named first team Freshman All-America by CollegeFootallNews.com, and second team by Rivals.com and The Sporting News.
In 2007's spring practices, Fox was permanently switched from the right side to the left, and he started there for the remainder of his career. He graded out at 96%, notching five pancakes along the way. In 2008, he was named a team captain, and started 12 of 13 games on the left side. A sprained right ankle broke his career-long starting streak, but Fox still graded out at 97% for the season. He drastically upped his pancake count, to sixteen—including three each against Texas A&M, UNC and Cal. Fox scored his first, and only, career touchdown on a five-yard tackle throwback play against Florida State.
Fox’s senior season went almost—but not quite—according to plan. After starting the first 11 games, Fox missed the final regular-season game of the year with an irregular heartbeat. Fox also missed Miami's Champs Sports Bowl loss to Wisconsin, when an irritating knee injury finally got too painful to ignore—he and the coaches agreed it was more important that he get the surgery to fix it, so he could prepare for the draft. Still, Fox racked up 20 pancakes, allowed just one sack, and was first team All-ACC; there are no doubts about his production on the college level.
I would really prefer not to get into that if that’s okay . . . It was just a fluke thing. I’ve been totally cleared. I’ve been back for several stress tests. They just said it was a one-day thing and I passed all the tests with flying colors and told it will never happen again.
Okay, so the proof of the pudding is in the eating, right? It’s time for everyone’s favorite part, the only real tool anyone has for prognosticating NFL success: YouTube highlight reels!
I saw a lot to like on that clip. Fox shows really nice ability to trap and pull; what I like his how he pulls and then hits; there’s a nice pop when he reaches his target. He shows decent footwork and hands, in most cases locking on to his man and keeping said man in front of him. Fox is beaten a couple of times, and (from what I can tell) misses an assignment or two, but overall we see very smart, steady play.
Fox seems to have a special knack for trap and seal blocks in the running game; we see him spring Graig Cooper for long runs with a few of them—as an aside, how about that Graig Cooper, eh? One thing that concerned me: Fox rarely dominated in one-on-one pass protection; we didn’t see much in the way of driving into defenders, or pushing them to the ground. He was also overwhelmed on a bullrush a couple of times. It’s clear that he needs to add bulk and strength to that 6’-6 7/8”, 303-pound frame.
While Fox has been a starter for four years at both right and left tackle his foot agility and lateral range may be on the marginal side for a left tackle in the NFL. He is a tough athlete that has proven his willingness to play with pain. He still needs improvement in his temperament on the field. He does not always finish blocks off or look to punish opponents as often as he could. Fox’s status may drop some in the draft as he will need rehab on an injured knee that he was playing with during his senior season. He is not a natural knee bender and will play with his pads too high at times.
A smooth, good-looking left tackle prospect who displays great flexibility out of his stance, Fox has the athleticism to consistently reach the corner. He does a good job sliding his feet and redirecting in pass protection. He isn't a Velcro player and struggles locking onto defenders at the point of attack. He does a nice job extending his arms into blocks but isn't heavy-handed. Fox is more of a finesse run blocker who uses his footwork to angle defenders away from the play. However, he's explosive off the snap and does a great job reaching the second level and hitting a moving target. He is one of the most fluid offensive tackles in space I've seen and is an ideal zone-blocking scheme candidate.
Rarely does a player from "The U" rank among the more underrated senior prospects among his position, but entering his senior season that is precisely what left tackle Jason Fox was. A highly-touted prep prospect who emerged as an immediate starter for the Hurricanes as a freshman, Fox began his career at right tackle, but started the final three years manning the blind side. He'll need to prove his health after missing the final two games, including the Champs Sports Bowl loss to Wisconsin, after undergoing surgery on his lower left leg. Not as blessed athletically as some of the more highly-touted offensive tackles who will be drafted ahead of him, Fox's size, consistency and durability shouldn't be overlooked.
SI.com grades Fox out as a 2.59, a "future starter". Additionally, SI's Peter King said "Down the line, some league people I talked to like the developmental potential of Miami tackle Jason Fox to be a long-term tackle."
Fox offers a solid combination of football instincts and mechanics to get the job done. He's not the greatest of athletes, yet he has an understanding for the position, which will help him eventually develop into a productive player at the next level.
So where does this all leave Fox? Per logic, per Tom Kowalski, and per George Yarno, it leaves him as the favorite to back up both tackle positions, and eventually push Gosder Cherilus for the right tackle spot, while preparing to take over for Jeff Backus.
I know some people are going to scream when I point this out, but do you see a pattern emerging? "Tough.” “Smart.” “Solid.” “Instincts and mechanics,” “not blessed athletically,” “consistent and durable.” Yup, you can see where I’m going here. To quote my attempt to satisfy the Lions' draft shopping list:
I know he's not the elite ÜBERTAKKEL that everyone has been screaming for since Lomas Brown, but to be brutally, brutally honest, folks, I think the Lions would be happy to replace Jeff Backus with Next Jeff Backus.
I said that about Bryan Bulaga—and Fox is not the prospect Bulaga is, especially in the strength department—but that quote rings true for Fox, too. If he can stay healthy, and develop his body over the next season or two, “the Next Jeff Backus” could indeed be the best way to describe Jason Fox.
Those of you who’ve been reading since the very beginning—or, incredibly, crawled back through the archives--know of my abiding love of coffee. I love nearly everything about the stuff. I love the steam rising out of a hot mug of joe, and I love the smell wafting up out of a porcelain cup of espresso. I love the taste of a nice clean cup of brewed preground, and I love the taste of a meticulously prepared macchiato. I love the crema surging to the top of a shot of espresso, and I love the absolutely singular smell of fresh roasted coffee beans. Out of everything I love about coffee, one of the qualities I treasure most is the warmth. The relaxing, soothing, radiation from a thick porcelain mug, the jolt of heat from a thin paper cup, the bracing flood of warmth rushing over my tongue, and the hot weight in my gut, warming me from the inside out like a little liquid furnace.
On Mondays, it takes little bit more of the good stuff to get me going. The first desperately-needed cup is often not until nine o'clock or so, often because I’m such a complete zombie that I forget to go get coffee. I’m lucky to make it back to my desk with that first cup before I’m trekking back to the office Bunn—desperately hoping I won’t be the sucker who kills the joe, and therefore beholden to make some mo’.
The second cup I down steadily, solidly, workmanlike. By the end of that second helping, I’m starting to get the tingl; my eyes aren’t drooping quite so much. I realize I’m slouching so badly in my chair that the backrest is supporting my head instead, and move to an upright position. But the third cup . . . ahh, the third cup. The initial sip of the third cup is like Zeus’s lighting; a bolt from the heavens igniting my nervous system! I lean forward in my chair, attacking the problems of the day with emphatic keyboard strikes, pummeling my dreary to-do list into submission. It is now, at the beginning of that third cup, that I write this.
Today marks the first day of an experiment. I’ve written serial posts before (“Meet the Cubs”, “To Whom It May Concern”, etc.), but those get posted as I complete them, never on a regular, scheduled basis. With training camp looming, and the preseason after that, and—no way—the regular season immediately after that, the flow of information will soon widen from a trickle to a torrent. Since I often write over the weekend, but rarely post, and since the analytics show that a majority of you folks only check in Monday through Friday, I—and you—are in need of a rundown of everything that happened in Lions-land over the weekend. And so:
Jeff Schultz of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote an extremely scary piece comparing Matt Stafford with the last multi-year starter at Georgia, David Greene. This is every Lions fan’s worst nightmare: that Matt Stafford can’t translate his success in the SEC to the NFL. That his arm, such a great weapon against college defensive backs, will be nullified by the fiercer pass rushes, the nightmarish blitz schemes, and the complicated coverages. That the dramatic quickening of the game, the dictionary-thick playbooks, and the blizzard of new terminology and nomenclature snow him under before he even has a chance to warm up. Unfortunately, there’s no silver lining to this story. Outside of the fact that more NFL teams fell in love with Stafford’s physical tools than Greene’s (Greene was a third-round pick), and the Lions' coaching staff’s glowing initial reports, there’s nothing that points to Stafford succeeding where Greene so completely failed. In fact, as Football Outsiders’s Bill Barnwell pointed out before the draft, Greene actually outproduced Stafford’s numbers at Georgia—same system, same coaching staff, Greene was better. Yikes.
New Lion Jon Jansen spoke to Carlos Monarrez of the Detroit Free Press, and spoke, very candidly, about the upcoming labor situation. He dropped some serious wisdom with the following quote:
"I don't think we're heading for anything like that. Yeah, we're going to threaten it, they're going to threaten. At some point everybody's going to be like, 'Oh, my gosh. This is going to happen.' But when it comes down to it, if there's a strike, the owners are in this, obviously they're in it for winning, but they're all also in it to make money. And if we're not on the field, no one's making money. ... If we're not on the field, we're not making money. We don't want that. When it comes down to it, we'll figure it out."
I dearly hope that the movers and shakers of both sides figure this out sooner rather than later. One of the NFL’s greatest strengths has been the ongoing labor peace—alternately blamed on and credited to a close working relationship between former Commission Tagliabue and former NFLPA President, the late Gene Upshaw. Now that Roger Goodell sits so strongly at the commissioner’s desk, and trial lawyer DeMaurice Smith heads up the NFLPA, I hope both sides can reach this common understanding: that the fans’ love of football is what pays all of their salaries, and they owe it to their employees/members to work together in a spirit of not killing what might be America’s last great golden goose.
The Lions are finally starting to knock out a few of these rookie contracts, with TCU RB Aaron Brown getting locked up on Friday afternoon. With a lingering hamstring problem keeping third-rounder Derrick Williams on figurative and literal ice throughout OTAs and minicamps, Brown has a great chance to establish himself as a valuable return option. He’ll compete with Williams and the newest Lion, WR Dennis Northcutt, throughout training camp.
Sixteen years ago, right around this time of year, the Detroit Lions squad that had been a game away from the Super Bowl just two season before was scouring free agency for offensive line help. After the freak on-field paralysis of Mike Utley, and the grotesquely untimely death of 25-year old All-Pro guard Eric Andolsek, the Lions were floundering to rebuild the interior of their line. I remember the headline in the Detroit Free Press: "Lions Add Nine Hundred Pounds of Beef". With the addition of free agent guards David Lutz, Bill Fralic, and Dave Richards, the Lions hoped that merely filling the holes with huge veteran dudes (this was '93, a three-hundred-pound offensive guard was still rare) would do the trick.
With the announcement of the signing of veteran OT--and former U of M standout--Jon Jansen, I couldn't help but be reminded of that time in 1993. The Lions, whose much-maligned offensive line is "anchored" by small-and-slow but tough-and-smart Jeff Backus at LT, and small-and-fast-and-smart-and-tough but small-and-weak Dominic Raiola, have in the past 13 months:
* drafted 6'-7", 319-pound RT Gosder Cherilus * re-signed 6'-5", 338-pound RT George Foster * signed 6'-6", 320-pound T/G Daniel Loper * signed 6'-7", 310-pound T Ephraim Salaam * signed 6'-6", 306-pound RT Jon Jansen
Of course, the first thing that jumps out at you about that list is how completely enormous these five men are; Jansen's weight is down from his usual playing weight because he was trying to fit into Redskins HC Jim Zorn's West Coast Offense. All five of them are naturally huge men with big frames. The second thing that jumps out at you is my listing of Gosder Cherilus, George Foster, and Jon Jansen all as right tackles. The fact is that all three were primarily (or exclusively) right tackles in college, all three were drafted to play right tackle, and all three are strong, tough, mean run blockers who are somewhere between "raw" and "horrible" in pass protection. All three of these men are natural right tackles--all in different stages of development, and all with different upsides and downside, but all right tackles. Complicating matters is the addition of Ephraim Salaam, who has played both right and left tackle extensively in his 12-year career. However, he most recently was replaced (by a rookie) as the starting LT on a subpar offensive line in Houston. Salaam, in his prime, had the agility to play left tackle, but at this point he is almost certainly more useful as an RT, or perhaps as a swing backup. Then there's Daniel Loper, who has the big frame to play either tackle spot, but the strength and agility to play guard as well. Loper was signed as the presumed new starter at LG, but at 6'-6" he's got a natural tackle's frame. Finally, there's Gosder the Gozerian--the biggest of them all. The Lions' 2008 first-rounder, Gosder started off slowly last season, but really started to show flashes of serious talent towards the end of his rookie season.
None of these men represent an upgrade over Jeff Backus at left tackle, and--a bizarre minicamp experiment by the Redskins notwithstanding--none have ever played center. Moreover, veteran RG Stephen Peterman was just re-signed to a long-term deal, so the five giants are really fighting for two starting spots: RT and LG. From my perspective, it seems like lunacy to bench a 1-year veteran whose floor is no lower than any of the veterans, and whose upside is arguably much higher. The only advantage I could see in a Salaam or Jansen at RT is having a cool veteran head out there in situations where an untimely penalty could cost the game. Also, of course, there's the possibility of these veterans being able to provide leadership, both verbal and by example, to the young Gozerian. I believe that Loper still has the inside track on the starting left guard position, if for no other reason than he's a young veteran with extensive guard experience. Foster, is the least likely to land a starting job--he will have to make his first career switch inside to guard, and then beat out either Peterman or Loper to land a starting gig. In fact, since he's no less mental-mistake prone than Gosder, and unable to play LT like Salaam can, I'm inclined to believe that Foster's only hope of making the roster at all is to switch to guard.
It remains to be seen how effective these men, these giants who probably can't ride the elevators at Ford Field all at the same time, can be for the Lions in 2009 and beyond. It's my hope that even if the holes aren't "filled" for good, and the problem isn't "solved", these veterans will still be able to bridge the gap between the line's present and its future. To bring out the best in talented projects like Cherilus, Lydon Murtha, and Manny Ramirez. To lift, run, practice, and perform like true NFL veterans. To set the table for the next huge portions of beef.
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