One Roster, Well-Scrambled

In the past two days, the Lions have:

• Placed Jordon Dizon on Injured Reserve, ending Dizon's season and leaving his future in doubt.
• Cited the strong performance of seventh-rounder Willie Young—and the chance to catch on somewhere else—and released last year's part-time starting DE, Jason Hunter.
• Citing a need at DE (?), signed 236-pound(!?) DE Korey Bosworth, nephew of Brian Bosworth, a.k.a The Boz (?!??!??!?!!).
• Placed TE Richard Dickson on the waived-injured list.
• Put Jonathan Wade's broken finger in a weird soft cast/hard glove hybrid.
• Re-signed MLB Lee Campbell, presumably to replace Dizon, and CB Jahi-Word Daniels, presumably to fill in for Wade.  Word-Daniels immediately went down with a hamstring injury.
• Waived Word-Daniels, poor guy, and K Aaron Pettrey, then signed CB/KR T.J. Rushing, and claimed ex-Falcons kicker Steven Hauschka.

Got all that?  No?  Don’t worry, neither did I.  The most significant move is the release of Jason Hunter, a young guy who contributed significantly last year.  As a perfect physical fit for the Lions’ intended scheme, Hunter was a low-cost, high-upside player.  However, Willie Young looked great against Pittsburgh, and there are only so many long-term developmental DEs you can carry on a roster.  With no future in Detroit, the Lions did the stand-up thing and let Hunter go while he can still catch on somewhere else.

The confusing thing was that they turned around and signed Korey Bosworth.  Bosworth is a DE/OLB ‘tweener, a guy who’d be a great fit at 3-4 OLB—and in fact, had been a camp invitee of the Broncos.  I immediately presumed he’d be slotted as an OLB in the Lions’ system, given that he’s the exact same height and weight as Zack Follett, and about thirty pounds lighter than the just-released Hunter.  But, quoth the Grandmaster, Jim Schwartz:

“We had a need at defensive end,” Schwartz said. “He’s a guy that we had interest in from college scouts, a guy that was able to get here and looked like he was in shape and would be able to give us some work.

“He’s a tough guy, plays hard, he’s got a good opportunity here. I mean we threw him right into the fire. He got reps right away."

Last season, the acquisitions all fit the long-term picture—but Hunter is a guy who could have helped if he’d stuck around, and Bosworth flatly has no place in a scheme that requires the ends to contain the run on the outside.  Let’s change perspective for a moment: if Willie Young is now the developmental end, the long-term picture doesn’t have a Jason Hunter in it, does it?  Kyle Vanden Bosch, Cliff Avril, Jared DeVries, Willie Young . . . no, no Hunter. 

Knowing that Hunter's long-term future is elsewhere, they let him seek it.  But, just carrying your top four ends through half of training camp is going to work them too hard—the Lions needed a fifth body out there to burn reps.  They asked the scouting department for the next best DE on the list, and the scouts said “Korey Bosworth.”  So, Bosworth is here, and Hunter is not.

Let’s hope that the injury bug takes no more bites out of the roster, and the panicked acquisitions stop.  There’s a long way to go, though, before the Lions get down to 53 + practice squad—and of course we know that Martin Mayhew never stops churning the bottom of the roster, never stops scouring the waiver wire, never stops looking for the diamond in the rough.

Technorati Tags: nfl,detroit lions,training camp,korey bosworth,jason hunter,cliff avril,willie young

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It’s a Marathon, Then a Sprint, Then a Marathon

Just after the new year, I started the Couch-to-5K running program.  It’s designed to get someone who lives a sedentary lifestyle ready to run a 5K in just nine weeks.  This Saturday I finished Week 5, day 3:

Brisk five-minute warmup walk, then jog 2.5 miles (or 25 minutes).

Whoever designed this program is a genius.  Every time the workout steps it up, I think, “Oh man, there’s no way, this is gonna kill me.”  Not only hasn’t it killed me, after most workouts I feel energized, powerful, healthy, alive.

This workout, the 20-minute run, is a big hurdle in the program; the longest run prior to that is 8 minutes.  The 8-minute ones weren’t a picnic, and I’d never run for 20 continuous minutes in my life.  Yet, come Saturday, my running partner and I settled into a slow-but-steady groove; still going after 15, 16, 17 minutes.

Lately, we’d been trying to “kick” to the finish of these workouts; pick up the pace for the last thirty seconds or so.  But, with all these walk/jog/walk/jog exercises, I’d spent about six weeks “running” and had never actually run.  Pacing myself has always been a problem for me, and I’d been fighting the urge to just take off for weeks.  But, when my partner said “a minute left, you wanna sprint?” I said "Okay"—and I took off.

In sailing, there’s something called a bow wave: the water being parted and displaced by the ship’s bow.  A ship’s speed is partly limited by this resistance; a normal sailboat can’t go fast enough to get up over this bow wave, and start sailing on the water.  However, with the right shape of hull, and enough power, a watercraft can hydroplane—skim on the top of the waves, free of the resistance of the water.

That's what it felt like during that run: I was skimming on top of the pavement, slicing through the air,  arms and legs swinging free, feeling only explosion under the balls of my feet as they touched, touched, touched the pavement.  Free from the slow-but-steady groove, free from the sustainable pace, I was completely unleashed and absolutely flying.

It dawned on me that sixty seconds of sprinting is an awful lot of sprinting, and my eventually my Emersonesque “transparent eyeball” moment fell back down to Earth with a lot of being really tired.  However, I was amazed—when the clock hit 00:00, I didn’t hack, cough, retch, or collapse, I just breathed really hard over and over and over.  I was spent, but I still felt energized, powerful, healthy, and alive.

It was those weeks of jogging, though, that made it possible.  At the beginning of the program, sixty seconds of jogging felt like an epic crucible: it seized my calves, made me cough and hack, and pushed me almost to my limit.  Just weeks later, though, I jogged for 19 minutes, sprinted about a minute more, and felt energized, not defeated.

So it is with free agency.*

The Lions’ out-of-character burst of activity in the wee hours of Friday morning added three solid pieces at three critical positions of need—and those additions made the team better.  While signings like Bryant Johnson and Grady Jackson certainly “filled”, at least on paper, holes in the Lions’ starting lineup, we can see that the sum of all those leftover parts didn’t actually upgrade the quality of the team. 

The Lions spent last year furiously churning the roster, scouring the waiver wire, signing practice-squadders, making trades, working out street free agents, signing and cutting guys left and right.  All the while, they were desperately hoping to find some foundational depth, youth, and talent; trying to supply the coaching staff with the raw material needed to build a winner.

If the Lions had made these same signings this past offseason, it wouldn’t have done them nearly as much good.  Replace Bryant Johnson with Nate Burleson, Dewayne White with Kyle Vanden Bosch, and Landon Cohen with Corey Williams . . . how many more wins do the Lions get?  Not many.

As Mike Rosenberg of the Free Press said:

The signings of Kyle Vanden Bosch and Nate Burleson and the trade for Corey Williams make sense, not just in a vacuum but in the context of what the Lions are trying to do. Finally, there is a plan.

Exactly.  With the 2009 draft class, and the entire 2009 year’s worth of coming and goings, the roster has taken shape.  There are some real assets for the future, and some cornerstones (Stafford, Johnson, Delmas) upon which to build.  These three acquisitions fit nicely into place—but that’s only because the past year’s worth of effort has built a place for them to fit into!

Now, there are still plenty of niches yet to be filled.  Commenters rightly christened the release of Patrick Buchanon, and allowance of Will James and Anthony Henry to leave, “Cornerback Armageddon”.  This Armchair-Linebackerian phrase fits perfectly—not because Buchanon, Henry, or James are devastating losses, but because there isn’t a single NFL-caliber corner on the roster behind them.  Four or five “good dime/okay nickel” guys, perhaps, but nobody who could be entrusted with covering an NFL wide receiver one-on-one. 

With top free agent corner Dunta Robinson gone to Atlanta, second-best corner Leigh Bodden wanting nothing to do with this franchise, and word on third-best corner Lito Sheppard, it looked as though the Lions’ options were between slim and none.

Instead, Mayhew did his thing, hammering out a deal to send the Lions’ sixth-round pick to Atlanta for newly-demoted-for-Dunta CB Chris Houston.  Moreover, the Lions are rumored to be entertaining a younger depth-type corner, Jonathan Wade from St. Louis.  Together with holdovers Eric King and Jack Williams, the Lions should have mix of experienced young veterans fighting for the #2, #3, and #4 cornerback spots.

This begs the question: when will the Lions fill the #1 spot?  Patience, friends—you can’t keep up a sprint forever, and this one’s already over.  However, the Lions will go back to the marathon: signing, trading, and releasing guys according to their plan, upgrading and remaking whenever there’s a chance.  Oh, and drafting.  Don’t forget drafting.

*I made you wait 500 words before I got to football.  Did you think I was going to pull it off?

Technorati Tags: detroit lions,nfl free agency,nfl,chris houston,johnathan wade,dunta robinson,leigh bodden,lito sheppard,atlanta falcons,running,trancendentalism

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