32 Teams in 32 days: Detroit Lions

Record: 4-12
Offensive Rank: 3rd (Passing: 2nd, Rush: 23rd)
Defensive Rank: 13th (Passing: 14th, Rush: 16th)

What went right?
Calvin Johnson was Calvin Johnson. Suh had a nice year when he plays for the right balls. Leshoure had a bunch of TDs for playing half a year I guess.

What went wrong?
Lions prioritised talent over character and got burned, Titus Young the most obvious example. Jim Schwartz had no clue how to control his team. Stafford was painfully inefficient. Yards don't tell the whole story with this team, their ranks fall dramatically in points. Defensively they couldn't rush the passer or cover.

Prospects for 2013?
The Lions have talent, but a poor attitude and a few holes. The defense has been neglected too long and needs fixing. With a better attitude and a good draft the Lions could be players in the NFC North. They could equally start slow and give up on Schwartz who likely faces a do or die year. Given its the Lions I'll place my money on the latter.

Projected 2013 Draft Pick: The Lions need to get better defensively, with Milliner gone theres nobody worth taking in the secondary, and with KVB gone and Avril a FA off a disappointing year, the Lions need help at DE, at this point the best available being Damontre Moore

The Lions "attitude" was probably always going to blow up in their faces. To an extent, they were so downtrodden and so used to losing they probably needed a bit of a mean streak and edgy attidude to lift them out of the doldrums but Schwartz has too much of that in him himself to allow him to be able to help his players control that attitude and use it in a positive way. Schwartz needs to be smarter and cooler and calmer and more controlled or else he needs to be fired because to my mind, he's as much of a problem here right now as some of the bad apples on the roster. There are bad apples on every NFL roster - some more than others - but the good coaches find ways of motivating those players into using the nasty attitude in a positive way. Schwartz is failing in that regard just now.

Lions have a handful of very gifted players who, as we saw the season before last, can carry them very far all by themselves. Trouble is, those players have no margin for error and cannot let their standards drop even an inch because there's no-one to pick up the slack. Stafford's play dropped last year and that was enough to send them into a tailspin. As soon as things started going a bit wrong the bad attitudes become a problem that just sunk the team in the end.

Of all the players in the NFL, Calvin Johnson is the one I probably feel most sorry for - outrageously gifted and yet had the misfortune to end up on a team that is doomed to eternal failure. The thing i love about him though is that he never moans about it. Never gets publicly down about it. Never quits. Would be so easy for him to do so. The guy is a class act in every way.

I agree with your comment that Megatron just gets on with it, without any public grumbling...classy guy.

Problem is, I guess, the salary that Johnson (and the other high picks) are on must limit how much they can spend on the rest of the roster.

TM Moot wrote:I agree with your comment that Megatron just gets on with it, without any public grumbling...classy guy.

See Larry Fitz and formerly (since the Texans are somewhat over the hump) Dre' Johnson
It's nice to see that the consistent top WRs have stopped being total divas!