The Detroit Lions On the Eve of NFL Free Agency, 2010

Lions fans have gotten used to going to bed on this night knowing that the Lions won’t be making headlines in the morning.  Last year at this time, the mantra was “right player, right price”—and we saw that mantra repeated as players like Grady Jackson and Philip Buchanon were signed to modest, short-term deals.

In fact, this has always been the plan.  At the press conference introducing Mayhew and Lewand as the new GM and Team President, Mayhew said:

We will build this thing through the draft - okay. We're not going to be jumping out there in free agency and throwing 30 million bucks at somebody on the first day at midnight. I think the way to do it is through the draft and we do it through young guys and you develop your guys, and you spend time training your guys. You don't give up on your guys. You hang in there with them and a lot of the good organizations in this league - that's what those teams do.

That sounded pretty trite and tired to Lions fans desperate for change.  It was true that the Lions’ roster was devoid of young, quality veteran talent —and truer that such talent is rarely available, or affordable, in free agency. 

After all, free agents are by definition players whose original teams didn’t think they were worth the money.

Still, Lions fans had to either accept that this would be a long, slow process, wherein rookies and veterans would try to bridge the gap between 0-16 and competitiveness, or get all ARGLBARGL about why the Lions aren’t going after any difference-makers.

The 2009 draft class offered little in the way of victories, but a lot of hope for the future.  The youngsters even beat the would-be Pudge Of The NFL, Albert Haynesworth, when he and his $100M contract came to town in Week 3.  By now, most Lions fans have come to realize the shocking dearth of talent on the Lions’ roster can only be rebuilt the slow, steady way: through several years of consistently excellent drafting.  Tom Lewand told Killer so just today:

We'll be ready to be on the phone after midnight.

Wait, what?

We'll see where it takes us. We're prepared. We've done a good job of getting ready and we're looking forward to it starting.

Wow.  That’s far from the “right player at the right price” bargain-hunting philosophy that’s been the hallmark of the last several free agent signing periods.  It’s partially due to a hearty stock of talent at a couple of key need positions: runningback, and defensive end.  It’s partially due to the strides the Lions managed to take with just one draft class, and where they hope to be after one more.  But partially, it’s due to this.

The Lions are struggling to sell tickets.  They’re cutting prices.  They’re going All-You-Can-Eat.  They’re coming up with every scheme under the sun to get people to come to Ford Field.  But after a decade of complete and total futility, many fans won’t invest their emotions, their time, or their money, until the Lions prove that they’re competitive.

Let me be clear: the Lions have a direction.  They have a foundation.  They have a brand-new coach, staff, quarterback, and front office.  These men have a ‘pass’ for at least this year and next; they’ll be justly given a chance to succeed before they can be blamed for on-field failure.  Ownership understands that these men cannot produce instant results with the tools they’ve been given.

But while the coaching staff answers to the front office, and the front office answers to the ownership, ownership answers to the fans—and we fans have reached the limits of our grace; we have no free passes left to give to anybody.

Above all, the Lions are a billion-dollar business, and you and I are the customers.  We buy the tickets, the gear, the brats, and the beer that keeps the lights on at Ford Field.  If we don’t go to the games, there’s no money coming in the door--and we won’t go to the games unless we have hope of seeing a win.

I’m not saying that the Lions are looking for a “quick fix”—they’re not about to ditch their long-term construction project and put up a yurt.  But the timetable is accelerated: they’re going to have to go over budget, bring in more contractors, and maybe lobby for some tax breaks or bribe an inspector or two.

They can’t cut corners—they won’t weaken the concrete or cheap out on the fixtures—but the Lions are going to push with everything they’ve got to prove to you and to me that they really are building something special under all those tarps, and all that scaffolding.

Tomorrow is going to be a very interesting day.  The salary cap will evaporate; that the old barrier to trades, the accelerated cap hit of prorated signing bonuses, will be gone.  Players and picks can be swapped at will, and the only financial considerations will be if the team can afford to pay the players’ game checks.

You may or may not see the Lions drain the piggy bank to sign a Kyle Vanden Bosch or a Thomas Jones; Mayhew indicated they have a couple of specific targets and will be aggressively pursuing them.  But Killer and I both think the real headlines will come from the trades that Mayhew has doubtlessly been pursuing.

Either way, I am positive that 24-48 hours from now, the Lions’ roster will be different—perhaps very different.  Will that help rekindle the blue flame in the hearts of those who’ve turned away?  Will it inspire the fans to go on shopping spree for gear and season tickets?  Will it ensure the Lions play before a full house, and a full TV audience, game after game after game?

We can only hope.

Technorati Tags: detroit lions,2010 nfl offseason,2010 nfl free agency,martin mayhew,tom lewand,kyle vanden bosch,thomas jones,nfl

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Goodbye: The Church of Schwartz

Though it's been scarcely a year since I began writing here, it seems like it's been much longer.  I find myself looking back through the archives more and more often, to remind myself of “how I did it last time”, or to check up on how my old predictions came out.

As exciting as it is to begin drawing from my blog’s ‘history’, this is still a very young site.  For the most part, the friends, readers, and commenters who’ve gathered here have stayed—if for no other reason than they just got here.  The Lions in Winter simply hasn’t been around long enough for the natural cycle of an Internet community to make a complete trip around; very few regular commenters have come, stayed, grown close, grown distant, and then left.

However, while TLIW hasn’t been around that long, the Lions blogosphere has . . and today, we say goodbye to The Church Of Schwartz.  As you can see, hackers have eviscerated the site—and its archives.  The authors, Reverend Spielman and Deacon Blades Boyd, have elected not to try to recreate from scratch what they’d spent the last year building.

The email from the good Reverend to the members of The Lions Congregation, the CoS’s weekly Lions writer roundtable, saddened and depressed me.  The number of truly dedicated Lions fans is relatively small; that of the excellent, frequently-updated Lions blogs even smaller.

We won't be losing Rev or the Deacon as fans, of course—and the Reverend assures me that they’ll continue to read and comment on Lions blogs and forums as they always have—but now, there’s one less place on the Internet that Lions fans can go for thoughtful, well-presented analysis and discussion, and for that we’re all worse off.

Reverend, Deacon, if you’re reading this, I’m pouring two mugs of hot, hard cider, and keeping two seats by the blue bonfire open for you.  You’re welcome to sit and drink here any time.

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Antonio Cromartie Being Traded to the Lions?

Last August, Gunther Cunningham was “flat pissed off” about Lions defenders wimping out on making tackles:

We had four guys on that play last week turn it down. Not miss it, turn it down, in my opinion.  You can coach and teach and all that, but it's about building an attitude. It's about an attitude that we're going to build on this defense, or they're going to have to deal with me, and I don't think they want to do that.

So it surprised me a little, and Tom Kowalski too, to hear that the Lions are at the forefront of the Antonio Cromartie derby.  Why would that be surprising?

Well, there's this: a brilliant, and hilarious, mock Facebook page that savagely lays bare Cromartie’s lack of tackling effort in the AFC playoffs.  How could Gunther, a lover of old-school, hard-nosed defense, possibly be okay with trading for a corner whose clean-jersey play is the stuff of Internet legend?

Here’s a scouting report on Cro, at the time of his draft:

We are all familiar with the fact from a personal standpoint that I like big corners. This young man definitely fits the criteria. He’s a unique physical talent. We looked at the opportunity at bringing a guy in here that is going to give us playmaking ability in the secondary. When you watch the tape on him you see his ball skills and it’s very impressive . . .

When you look at the skills and you see the body of work he was involved with you feel very confident and comfortable that the only think that it comes down to is the medical. The medical came back absolutely fine. I’m confident it wasn’t a difficult choice to make. It was very evident that he was the one guy there that was clearly our choice.

Who said that?  The Chargers’ then-Head Coach, Marty Schottenheimer.  Remember when Gunther built those legendarily nasty Chiefs defenses in the mid-to-late 90s?  Yeah, that was with Marty at the helm.  Marty is not only a longtime friend and colleague of Gunther’s, they share a passion for old-school football.

In 1997, when Marty and Gunther’s Chiefs had the #1 defense in the NFL, they did it with corners James Hasty and Dale Carter.  Hasty was a little smaller, and a little feistier, but take a look at Carter: 6’-1”, 194 pounds, didn’t put up great tackling stats (when they managed to even keep track of his tackles) . . . but picked off 21 passes in his first seven years in the NFL.

These numbers look very, very much like Antonio Cromartie’s career to this point, and I’d think Cunningham would consider Cromartie & Buchanon, with King competing with James and/or a rookie for the nickel spot, a big upgrade over Buchanon, James, and a street free agent. Remember, it wasn’t tackling that Lions corners Philip Buchanon, Anthony Henry, and Will James couldn’t do last season—it was covering opposing wide receivers.

The other thing you have to consider is the price.  Tom Kowalski and Michael Schottey are both saying that Cro might be had for as little as a fifth-round pick—and that’s simply a must-do deal.  There’s no way that the Lions could add a corner of Cromartie’s physical skills in the fifth round—and, as I’ve said before, cornerback is a spot where rookies almost never provide drop-in upgrades; the learning curve is very steep.

This trade would add a talented veteran at a position of extreme need for a minimal price.  Given Martin Mayhew’s penchant for pulling these types of deals off, is it really that surprising?  All we can do now is wait for the beginning of the league year (Friday), when Cro’s salary becomes tradable, and hope.

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