Three Cups Deep: Preseason Wk. 1, Cleveland Browns

. . . and once again, there was Lions football.

The Lions faced off against the Browns on Friday. Ford Field was packed to the brim with season ticket holders on family vacation, such as myself. Nevertheless, those who were there made plenty of noise in close junctures—of which there were many, because neither offense did much against either defense.

For all the horribleness of the Cleveland Browns in general, their defense was in fact outstanding last season: they had the fifth-best scoring defense in the NFL. When you consider that defense was paired with a 30th-ranked (i.e., second-worst) offense, it’s even more impressive. It shouldn’t be too surprising, then, that a cagey don’t-show-too-much-or-risk-too-much effort from Stafford & Co. didn’t result in much scoring.

It also shouldn't be a surprise that the defensive line hassled Brandon Weeden something fierce. It shouldn’t be a surprise that without Trent Richardson, the Browns couldn’t run the ball well. Unfortunately, it also shouldn’t be a surprise that once the backup secondary and linebackers were in, discipline in zone coverage and screens was severely lacking.

Seneca Wallace’s ability to extend plays resulted in frequent breakdowns, allowing the Browns to move the ball much more effectively in the second half. That, combined with Kellen Moore’s inability to find and deliver the ball to a downfield receiver, denied the Lions their eighth straight preseason victory.

It wasn’t good enough, was it?

As we know from 2008, thrilling fourth-quarter preseason comebacks usually mean the losing team didn’t care enough; so it seemed with the Lions. Matthew Stafford, about whom the press has been flat-out gushing all offseason long, threw an ugly ball off his back foot as he fell away from pressure that wasn’t so much there; Brandon Pettigrew ran the wrong route and the ball was picked off.

The players with something to prove took it seriously, and made an impact: Willie Young looked incredible, Bill Bentley had a pick (and should have had another), Keiland Williams continued his excellent camp form and Joique Bell showed why he’s been a camp sensation wherever he’s camped.

But some of those who had nothing to prove played like it; it looked like the offense was both executionally and playcallingly mailing it in. Against the stiffer-than-you might think Browns defense, the results were disappointing, especially from the passing game. However, the running game showed up for all four quarters. Kevin Smith opened the game with a nine-yard carry; by the end of the day Smith, Williams, Bell and Stefan Logan combined for 198 yards on 33 carries (exactly 6.0 YpC).

Special note has to be made of the offensive line here: the right side of the line, especially Gosder Cherilus, looked excellent, and the extra weight Rob Sims has chosen to carry shows in his ability to hold his ground at the point of attack. There was daylight for the backs, inside and outside, when it was mostly-starters against mostly-starters; that daylight waxed and waned as players subbed in and out on both sides, but on the whole it was a marked improvement from 2011.

The caveat to this is the play of Jeff Backus. Backus injured his thumb in camp; I have no idea to what extent that limited him on Friday but he didn’t look like himself. He was inconsistent against the run and the pass—sometimes he looked solid, others overwhelmed. He gave up the inside rush on the Stafford interception; the DE simply went to his inside shoulder and he wasn’t prepared. Backus tried everything once he was beaten, but he was beaten too easily.

The other concern is the second- and third-string back seven’s defense against screens and broken plays. This was an old Achilles heel of pre-Schwartz Lions defenses, but I thought this system was inherently stouter against such things. The lack of discipline in the second half was both obvious and lethal. Colt McCoy and Seneca Wallace simply did too much damage, even considering they were doing it against backups.

So the Edmund Fitzgerald Trophy returns to the shores of Lake Erie for a year; in the long run that doesn’t matter. Here’s what does matter: 1) as a gestalt, the running game is improved, 2) as a gestalt, the back seven still struggles to make stops, 3) Jeff Backus is not his usual self.

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Lions Sign Eric Wright; Are They Onto Something?

I almost overlooked him. I almost left him off my cornerback shopping list. “It would be a lot of extra typing,” I thought. “I’ve got to get this post up soon,” I fretted. But there was something about Eric Wright, something about his potential and production, something about his story intrigued me. I got a feeling I’ve gotten a few times before, a vibe like I’m onto something. So, I took the time to delve into Wright’s PFF data, and I’m glad I did:

Eric Wright’s inclusion on this list may surprise some, as the Browns’ 2007 2nd-round pick actually received death threats over his perceived poor play last season. PFF graded him poorly indeed, with a –4.3 overall. His coverage mark was a rotten –11.9, second-worst in the NFL. However, Wright intrigues me for several reasons: first, he’s 5’-10”, 190, so a decently-sized fellow. Second, was graded +3.3 in pass rush, third-best in the NFL, and +4.7 in run support, 12th-best in the NFL.

It’s true, Wright was burned for 6 TDs, and he allowed opposing quarterbacks a fifth-worst 121.5 passer rating. But he’s clearly physically gifted, and at 25 still quite young. I also identified a trend with the PFF data . . .

In 2008, Wright had the eighth-best overall cornerback PFF grade. Over 1052 snaps, he turned in an +11.1 rating, despite a –1.1 coverage mark. His run support and pass rush made such an impact, he was the only corner in the top 25 with an even slightly negative coverage mark. He played every snap at left CB. In 2009, he flip-flopped between right and left corner all season long, and his performances were uneven. At work for a whopping 1106 snaps, thrown at 89 times, Wright turned in an overall grade 0f –0.5.

In 2010, Wright played left corner exclusively, until he suffered a bone bruise and got moved in to nickel. He struggled all year long, turning in mostly neutral grades, plus four negatives and a single positive. Oddly, his best performance of the year was in Week 2 (+2.9), and his worst was Week 3 (-4.4) . . . what I’m driving at here is that Wright is a young, talented player with a lot of experience, and he’s proven to be exceptional—truly exceptional—at a couple different dimensions of his position. It’s true that the one exception, coverage, is the one we’re really looking for, but if he’s available for peanuts, he’s exactly the kind of reclamation project the Lions do brilliantly with.

In many ways, Eric Wright is as Chris Houston was: a 2007 second-round draft pick who made an immediate impact, was widely hailed as a an up-and-comer, then had a down year and was given up on. Wright had a longer track record of greater success, but his one bad year was a much bigger disaster.

Wright has always had talent. A three-star RB/DB out of San Francisco, he had offers from almost all of the Pac-10—and he committed to USC. As a redshirt freshman, he stepped on the field and started for the Trojans as they won the National Championship lost institutional control. Wright himself had four tackles and an interception for the Trojans as they won did not play in the 2005 BCS National Championship Orange Bowl.

In March 2005, Wright was accused of committing sexual assault. The charges were dropped, but the stigma didn’t disappear. Faced with a suspension, Wright chose to transfer to UNLV, sitting out a year before getting back on the field for what would be his final college season. He declared for the draft—and though many teams thought the 5’-10”, 190-pound had first-round talent, Wright fell due to character concerns over the incident:

Despite sparkling in workouts during the draft process, Wright also had to convince teams he was worth the risk on the character meter. The Browns were among several teams that rated him draftable.

Said Browns general manager Phil Savage, "I believe in second chances."

Savage said that, in addition to a team investigation that confirmed Wright had no legal issues before or after the incident two years ago, he relied on gut feeling. Savage interviewed Wright at the combine, visited with him at a workout and along with coach Romeo Crennel gained a feel when Wright came to Browns headquarters weeks before the draft.

Wright scored points with the Browns and other teams with his openness.

"He kind of just laid out his side of the story," Savage said. "He basically said, 'I made a mistake, and I haven't made a mistake since.' "

The Browns actually traded up for Wright, sending third- and fourth-round picks to Dallas, and swapping positions in the sixth, to add Wrights’s second-round slot. Per that USA Today article, then-Browns GM Phil Savage said he would have considered Wright at the Browns’ original second-rounder (36th overall) had he not traded it away to get Brady Quinn. Ahem.

Wright, as said above, quickly developed into an outstanding young corner. In 2008 and 2009, he started all 32 games for the Browns, had 7 interceptions, and 27 passes defensed. Then . . . something went wrong. The Cleveland Browns blog Dawgs by Nature said:

For the first three years of his career, Wright was a solid cornerback for the Browns. Opposing teams seemed to stay away from him and he rarely gave up the big play. Last year, the Browns received additional help at the position in Sheldon Brown and Joe Haden. Teams started going after Wright at the beginning of the season, and forever reason, he looked completely lost. It was not the same Wright we had seen his first three years in Cleveland. It was almost as bad as Jake Delhomme's playoff collapse when he was with the Panthers a couple years ago. When Delhomme threw a pass the following season, you always had a bad feeling. With Wright, whenever a team targeted him deep, you had the feeling that it was going to result in a touchdown. It usually did, especially if your name is Anquan Boldin.

Interestingly, the members of that blog voted at 2:1 clip to keep Wright around, and many of the comments suggested that the problem with Wright was being hung out to dry by a terrible pass rush. At the Browns’ Scout.com site, the Orange and Brown Report, users speculated about personal problems, or some kind of off the field distraction. OBR member “Brownieman,” though, posited the following:

What I want to know... and I hope nickelbacker is still lurking around and will be willing to shed some light on this.... is did Eric REALLY have an off year? Or was it other circumstances? Up until last year Wright has been way above average for us, he has been our best corner since he was drafted. He was rarely abused by ANYONE before last year. Now I doubt he just forgot how to play defense.... something else had to be going on.

Does anyone think that Wright's struggles last year, may have anything to do with Ward blowing coverages? . . . If Ward had responsibilities over the top, and read the play wrong, it would have left Wright on an island, when he believed he had a man providing coverage further up the field. This would explain how WR's were able to get extreme amounts of separation over the top. Wright is not slow, and I find it hard to believe that he "couldn't" run with Anquan Boldin. It makes more sense, that Wright followed Boldin through his zone and then broke off coverage as he was leaving his zone and entering Wards area of the field... Only to realize that Ward was out of position, which in turn makes Wright abandon his responsibilities and try to provide some sort of coverage instead of letting a man just run free up the field . . . I may be off, but to me, it seems like Wright is taking the blame for Ward's growing pains.

Obviously, the Browns are letting Wright walk, so he can’t just be a victim of circumstance. To whatever degree it was his fault, Wright’s play took an unexpected, unprecedented step back last season. But there’s no denying that Wright has the tools and talent to be a top corner in the NFL—and spent three years proving he was on track to do just that before he derailed last year. Tom Kowalski’s recent Tweet bears this out:

Talked to a few NFL personnel people ... they think Detroit landed a terrific player in Eric Wright .. coming off bad year, but great talent

No one knows whether Wright can recover his previous form. For that reason, I’m glad he’s on a one-year deal—and I hope the Lions aren’t done signing starting-caliber cornerbacks. If Wright plays like he did last year, and Nate Vasher is the #2, the Lions’ secondary could well be their Achilles heel. However, if Wright bounces back like Houston did, and the Lions re-sign Houston? Suddenly the cornerbacks look very, very solid. Only time will tell whether Mayhew’s gamble pays off . . . but I feel like he’s onto something.

Technorati Tags: nfl,detroit lions,eric wright,cleveland browns,nfl free agency,cornerbacks

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The Defensive Line and the Secondary, Part II

When I first delved into the connections between pass rush and pass defense, I came away conclusions fueled partly by data, and partly by ignorance.  They were:

We have found that there is no inverse correlation between that pass rush effectiveness and passing effectiveness; on plays where a sack does not occur, per-play pass yardage is unaffected.

We have found that there is no inverse correlation between interception rate and passing effectiveness; on plays where an interception does not occur, per-play pass yardage is unaffected.

These may have been exaggerations.  Commenters, emailers, and strangers on the street have since filled me in.  The correlation coefficients looked dismissible to my amateur eyes, but weren’t—not entirely, anyway.  There was a –.068 correlation coefficient between “dropbacks per sack” and “raw yards per attempt”.  Essentially zero, I thought, but it’s closer to –.1 than to zero—and that’s more than nothing.  Not much more, but more.

The correlation coefficient between "attempts per interception" and "yards per attempt" was –.091.  That’s still only approaching .1; a weak correlation at best.  Still, my two statements above aren’t entirely accurate.  Over the past 20 years of NFL data, there has been a very mild inverse correlation between sacks, and pass effectiveness on non-sack downs (and the same goes for INTs).

This all implies that the pass rush might indeed affect offense even when it doesn’t hit home—but I couldn’t prove it with the data I had.  I’d been working with the 50,000-foot-view: year-over-year leaguewide NFL trends; he low resolution of this data may have blurred the very effects I’m hoping to measure.

As I said in my “parallel efforts” post last week, the Mathlete, of MGoBlog fame, did some of that further research.  As the Mathlete compared sacks, picks, and overall performance, he found:

Not entirely surprisingly, the better a defense is at producing sacks and interceptions, the better it is on downs where neither occur. For every point per game that a defense generates due to sacks, the overall pass rush generates 1.2 ppg of additional value. Interceptions are also powerful, but not as much so. Each ppg of value a defense generates through interceptions is worth 0.9 ppg of additional value.

This relies on “expected points,” here explained by Brian Burke of Advanced NFL Stats.  EP is a way to recognize the reality that four yards gained on 3rd-and-3 are not nearly as valuable as four yards gained on 3rd-and-8.  By finding the historical likelihood of scoring on a given down and distance from a given field position, Burke has created baseline EP values.  By finding the difference between the EP values from before a play to that play, you can gauge what that play is worth (in EP Added, or EPA).

Using EP allowed the Mathlete to quantify exactly what sacks—and the associated pass rush on non-sack downs—are worth.

From 2006-2009 in games between two D1 teams in competitive game situations (the “universe” for this and most of my analysis) the average defensive unit produced 2.3 ppg worth of sacks and 2.0 ppg worth of interceptions.

So, an average defense produced 2.3 ppg worth of sacks, and gained 2.76 ppg worth of “footsteps effect” from the pass rush.  Likewise,  the average defense snared 2.0 ppg worth of interceptions, and 1.8 ppg worth of “dink-and-dunk effect”.  Mathlete concluded that all he found was the dog wagging the tail: sacks and picks are merely indicators of good defensive performance, not the other way around.

However, this is all still limited to sacks, and attempting to derive the “cringe effect” on non-sack plays.  However, I’ve pulled down data from ProFootballFocus.com. They use film review to grade individual performances, as well as capture unofficial or untracked stats—like QB hits, and QB pressures.  Rather than attempt to measure the size of the tyrannosaur by the size of the ripples in the water cup, I’ll look at the actual data.

The data I’m using is PFF’s player data for the 2009 season, aggregated into team numbers.  A caveat, these numbers do vary from the official NFL totals, especially with subjective stats like sacks, half-sacks, and tackles.  From what I’ve seen, the differences are small, but it’s worth getting out there.  Anyway, the first order of business: test my assumption that pressures correlate with sacks.

Result?  “Yes,” but not as strongly as I’d assumed.  The correlation coefficient was .584, quite strong.  But as an anonymous commenter noted:

One of the best indicators of nature of the relationship is the effect size calculation. You can obtain an effect size by squaring your correlation coefficient. This will tell you the amount of variability the variables contribute to each other. There's a lot of noise in NFL data so an effect size will tell you how much unique data is explained by the correlation alone.

Rule of thumb for effect sizes: small .2; medium .5; large .8

The effect size here is displayed in that graph as R-squared: 0.3413.  It’s far from one-to-one, but it’s safe to say that teams that get lots of pressures tend to get lots of sacks, and vice-versa.  For what it’s worth, the best “finishers” are the Redskins, getting 43 sacks to 109 pressures.  For academics’ sake, the Falcons were the other way around: 160 pressures to only 31 sacks.  The Lions were . . . well, terrible: 23 sacks, and 101 pressures.

Next up, let's take that “hit” and “pressure” data out for a spin:

This is the total yards per attempt allowed, regressed against the percentage of dropbacks where “pass rush” was generated.  Dropbacks are “attempts + sacks”, and I’m dividing that number by cumulative sacks, hits, and pressures.  The resulting correlation is weak, –0.152, and when squared to get the effect size, it’s a negligible .0232. 

So, once again, we’re seeing no real connection between pressure and good pass defense.  You see the most interesting data point?  Yeah, that one—the one where they’re allowing three-quarters of a yard less per pass attempt than the 2nd-best team.  That’s the New York Jets; they allowed a miniscule 4.91 yards per pass attempt, while finishing 19th in PFF-scored sacks, and 9th in per-dropback “pass rush” rate.  So, the Jets had a good pass rush, but nothing that correlates to the incredible per-play passing effectiveness seen here.

Secondly, my eyes were drawn to the third-rightmost data point, and how we’d have to scrape it off the Yards-per-attempt ceiling.  That would be the Cleveland Browns, whose 47 sacks, 42 QB hits, and 139 pressures generated pressure on 42.93% of dropbacks.  That pass rush rate is third-best in the NFL, behind only Dallas (46.91%) and Minnesota (44.77%).  Yet, Cleveland’s pass D was flat terrible: it allowed 7.44 yards per attempt, ahead of only Oakland, St. Louis, Miami, and, yes Detroit (7.80). 

Things are not looking great for our thesis.  If the Lions improved their 2009 per-dropback pass rush rate to match Cleveland’s, from 27.85% to 42.93%, we’d certainly expect a better improvement in allowed Y/A than 7.80 to 7.44.

Last time, passes defensed were to coverage what sacks were to pass rush; I presumed that in years where passes defensed were up, “coverage” was better.  In this case, though, I have Pro Football Focus’s “thrown at” and “reception allowed” figures.  Again, let’s dispense with trying to derive the whole picture from one rare subset of outcomes.  FYI: Total TAs don’t equal attempts, and total receptions allowed don’t equal total receptions.  I presume the discrepancies are from uncatchable passes, screen and swing passes that aren’t thrown “into coverage”.

I’ll divide total per-team receptions allowed by total per-team TAs to get a per-team Percent Caught, as PFF does on a per-player basis.  This should be an actual measurement of the quality of pass coverage.  Let’s regress it against Y/A:

Bingo.  There’s as strong of a correlation between percent of catches allowed by coverage and yards-per-attempt, as there is between pressures and sacks.  Oh, and who’s that team with the astonishingly low percent-caught, and correlatedly low Y/A?  Yup, it’s the Jets.  The evidence is mounting: pass rush doesn’t equal pass defense, pass defense equals pass defense.

But, that’s not the whole story, is it? After all, isn’t the magic of a 4-3 defensive line supposed to be that it can generate pressure without a compromising coverage?  Won’t there be great improvement in a 4-3 that generates pass rush from the line, without having to blitz linebackers and DBs?  Stay tuned for the next exciting adventure!

Technorati Tags: nfl,detroit lions,defense,sacks,interceptions,statistics,analysis

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three cups deep: celebration

Explosion. 

A bar full of people going completely wild; strangers high fiving and shouting and yelling and pounding the tables.  Cell phones ringing, hands clapping, chants, and glasses being drained.  In the middle of it all, a young man and his three-and-a-half-year-old son: screaming, yelling, signalling "TOUCHDOWN", and revelling in the moment.

As much as the victory over the Redskins marked the end of an era--of Matt Millen, Rod Marinelli, and total futility--this moment marked the beginning of a new one: the era of Martin Mayhew, Jim Schwartz, and Matthew Stafford.  At this point, if you're reading these words, you already know the story.

Matthew Stafford, after scrambling all over the field and back, with time long since expired, let fly a Hail Mary to the back of the end zone--and got driven hard into the turf, destroying his left shoulder.  After Hank Poteat was flagged for shoving Bryant Johnson out of bounds, Stafford was helped up; he staggered to the sideline, and collapsed.  As team doctors worked on the Forty Million Dollar Man, Daunte Culpepper took the field.

There was a buzz throughout the stadium (and the bar)--both concern for Stafford, and excitement for what was to come; after all, here it was!  The Lions had one yard to go to win!  While I'm no fan of Daunte Culpepper, if you tell me I need one yard on one play to win, and give me a 6’-6”, 260-pound quarterback who can run . . . well, I like those odds.

Suddenly, the Browns called timeout—and suddenly Matthew Stafford, visibly in pain, gamely gimped back out to onto the field.  One play in hand, one yard to go, and zero seconds on the clock . . . touchdown.  With that, Stafford became both the first rookie to throw 5 TDs in a game since 1937, and the unquestioned leader of this franchise.  In the words of Kevin Smith:

"It makes me feel good, I almost want to cry -- knowing you've got a teammate out there like that, he's willing to put it all on the line and there's no telling what his injury is, how serious it is. You define the type of player you are, the type of person you are. It comes down to one play with everything on the line. He could've easily let Daunte (Culpepper) come in and take the play. But he wanted to be out there.

This will be Matt Stafford's signature win.  If he flames out in a blaze of interceptions, people will point to this win and wonder what might have been.  If he goes on to be the next Elway, and the Lions win multiple Super Bowls with him at the helm, this will be the game they point to and say “It all started when . . .” 

There’s no word yet on whether the new avatar of the franchise will be available to lead his team in the annual celebration of Lions football, Thanksgiving.  X-rays showed no broken bones; an MRI is set for today.  Still, even if he’s out for the remainder of the season, he’s proven what kind of quarterback he is, he’s proven what kind of man he is, and he’s made this team his own.

As the surge of euphoria quieted to beaming joy, Lions fans at the bar all buzzed and chatted and laughed.  A few came up to my son and exchanged high-fives with the biggest little fan in the place.  One fan came over to me and said, “Are you . . . Ty?  Is your name Ty?”  It turned out to be Minker, a regular reader and well-spoken commenter.  We shook hands, caught up, and then left for home with dozens of other fans, buzzing about the incredible win we’d just witnessed.

The Lions may be 2-8, folks, but the blue fire still burns.  Lions fans everywhere have been desperate for this win, desperate for a reason to hold their heads high and be proud.  Today, folks, do it.  Hold your head high.  Wear your colors, if you can, and speak out loud.  Go on the forums and the message boards and set blue fire to everything.  We’ll remember this day for the rest of our lives . . .

. . . and judging by the way my son raved about it for the rest of the night, maybe he will, too.

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the lions congregation: week ten

Well, it’s time once again for the Lions Congregation—the weekly series over at the Church of Schwartz.  Men living lives committed in service to the Schwartz discourse upon these questions three:

• Well respected ESPN columnist Kevin Seifert says the Lions have 7 keepers on their roster. Using his methodology, who do you see as a keeper on this roster?
• Do the Lions need cheerleaders?
• What’s your projected outcome for Browns – Lions?

Go, and enrich your soul with the answers!

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Apropos of nothing

Quick update: I’m still working on the SFE (UFR) of the offense vs. Atlanta, but there’s no way I’m missing out on watching the Great Lakes Classic.  I’ll be Tweeting throughout, though, so be sure to follow @lionsinwinter for more!  Storylines of note:

• Lions DT Shaun Smith was a member of the other side just a few weeks ago, and to say the split was “contentious” doesn’t really cover it.  Smith is regarded as an extremely talented player who had trouble staying motivated; he ought to be motivated as he’ll ever be tonight.
  


• Touted second-rounder Louis Delmas is expected to finally get on the field tonight.  This is good.
  
  
• Oh, and something about a rookie quarterback?  I don’t know.

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why did the 400-pound chicken come home to roost? to get whatever he wants!

It puts me in a difficult spot, as a fan.  When a player like Shaun Rogers--an impossible beast who can outrun, outjump, and generally out-athlete men half his size--gets drafted by the Lions and sees immediate success, it's hard not to love him.  When you see this big doofy mug (thanks, Sports Illustrated):

How can you not love him?  When it looks like he's on his way to being one of the best players in the game at his position--maybe even on his side of the field--how can you not love him?  How can you not want to drive to Ford Field, buy a Big Baby jersey and an eight dollar beer, and holler like a Texas country boy every time he blows somebody up?

Here's the problem.

As NFL.com's Adam Schefter points out, that big fat lovable tub of badass carries a lot of baggage--and I am neither referring to Samsonite, nor the keg of flesh behind his doubtlessly-melon-sized belly button.  Rogers plays hard when he is happy, or feels he has something to prove, and that's it.  If he's not happy, doesn't feel like he's under the gun, or just plain doesn't wanna be sweet that day, he goes from being a badass to a lardass, effective purely for his size and nothing else.

We as Lions fans saw plenty of both the unblockable monster, and the wind-sucking goldbricker.  Many have correctly noted that the loss of Rogers put a dagger in the heart of a nearly-moribund defense, and the one INT we got out of Leigh Bodden in the one year he was here, can't possibly make up for the every-down impact Rogers had.  I concede that removing Big Baby from the middle of the defense created a cavernous hole, and our run defense was horrifyingly bad without him.  

However, it was only 'pretty bad' with him--and there were critical times (like the Philly game of 2007) where he was technically present on the field, but got blown off the ball by 100-pounds-lesser men.  Moreover, his play on the field is only part of the picture.  He clearly buys his own hype, and wants to be treated at all times like the lead dog--regardless of recent production or attitude.  Everything I heard while he was here was that the was a literal and physical enormous presence in the locker room, and he more or less ruled it with an iron fist.  He, like most other talented players stuck on the Millen-era Lions, grew completely sick of it all and turned the coaches out.  His influence became entirely negative; his off-field antics grew increasingly unpalatable.  Finally, his on-field play absolutely melted into nothing; he could be counted on nothing more than 20 snaps of 'meh', occasionally punctuated by a big play if the game was still close in the fourth quarter.

The Browns got most of a season of "good" Shaun Rogers, making the Pro Bowl as the rarest and most integral piece of a 3-4 defense: the nose tackle.  Now that they're building around him, Mangini has realized--too late--the importance of handling Big Baby with kid gloves.  He's seeing the problems that come with making Rogers the foundation of your defense.  And he'll find out that Rogers will find the chinks in his armor, and undermine his ability to coach.  Good luck, Mangenius, you'll need it.

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