The Detroit Lions desperately need safety Louis Delmas to get healthy if they have any hope of contending in the brutally-tough NFC North. 

The team had hoped Delmas could possibly be ready to play Week 1 against the St. Louis Rams after he underwent knee surgery at the beginning of August, but the latest reports indicate he's nowhere close to that goal.

According to Chris McCosky of the Detroit News, head coach Jim Schwartz said on Monday: "He's not to the point that he's even on the progression right now. He's week to week, not day to day. A lot of those other guys are day to day if they come out. He's week to week."

McCosky also reports that John Wendling and Erik Coleman have been taking most of the first-team snaps in Delmas' absence. 

Neither one of those players is good in coverage, though. Wendling has exactly one start to his name during his five-year career, and during that time, he's defended exactly two passes. Coleman has been a productive player throughout his career, but he's on his last legs and wasn't ever much of a center fielder. 

The Lions are going to get torched by the likes of Jay Cutler, Aaron Rodgers and, yes, even Christian Ponder if they're forced to rely on one of them during the regular season. 

This development makes me question even further something that bothered me this past spring. Why in the world didn't the Lions make more of an effort to make legitimate efforts to better their secondary?

For reasons unknown to me, they failed to improve upon what was already a subpar secondary, and now the team is going to pay for that lack of foresight. 

Without Delmas as the anchor, the secondary is going to give up a ton of catches for big plays and touchdowns, and they'll struggle to stay afloat in the NFC North. 

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