The Detroit Lions: FINALLY, a Plan in Place

(Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)

It’s deliciously ironic that the last time the Lions had a semblance of a plan, it was designed by a moon-faced, cigar-smoking oaf of a coach.

One fall Sunday, back in 1988, owner Bill Ford levied one of the worst indictments any owner could on his football coach.

He had just seen his team get creamed once again, another mercy killing in a season careening out of control, and he gave the reporters a rare postgame analysis.

“We’re losing,” Ford said, “and we’re boring.”

It wasn’t long before the coach, Darryl Rogers, was shoved out the door.

The Lions of 1988 showed up at every Sunday gunfight with a penknife.

The offense was slow, plodding. The aerial attack was virtually non-existent, matched only by the nearly invisible running game.

It reminds me of a classic line by that crack-up/coach John McKay.

“We didn’t block,” he said about his Tampa Bay Bucs after another beatdown, “but we made up for it by not tackling.”

The Lions of ’88 couldn’t pass, but made up for it by not running.

Bill Ford was spot on: They were losers, and they were boring.

And the Silverdome was half-empty on Sundays, which also hastened Rogers’ canning.

Ford handed the keys to his Edsel to defensive coordinator Wayne Fontes with five games left in the wasted season.

After managing two wins in those five games—both against the nearly-as-woeful Green Bay Packers—Ford ripped the “interim” part off Fontes’ label and made him a full-fledged NFL head coach.

The jolly, maudlin Fontes may have projected a clown-like persona, but he had some ideas.

He had a plan, in fact.

The owner was right about the boring part, so why not un-boring things up a bit?

Fontes, during his five-week audition, managed to hire an offensive guru named Darrell “Mouse” Davis. Mouse espoused something called the Run-n-Shoot offense, in which anyone who wasn’t a lineman or the quarterback was a wide receiver.

Fontes’ order to Mouse was simple: Don’t be boring.

So Mouse scurried into town, his playbook and head filled with passing patterns and player movement and all those little receivers running all over the field.

It was a quantity-over-quality theory. The Lions weren’t blessed with talented pass catchers, but Mouse and Fontes (sounds like a vaudeville act) figured that if they sent as many of them into the secondary as the rules would allow, they might get lucky.

And the Lions, at least, wouldn’t be boring.

Wayne Fontes had a plan. For sure. He lucked into drafting the jitterbug running back Barry Sanders in his first draft. He picked up some more receivers, still not filled with talent but a little better than what he inherited from Rogers.

Then, in 1990, Fontes moved on to Phase II of his plan.

He had the run part down in the Run-n-Shoot offense with Sanders. He just needed a straight shooter.

Fontes chomped on his cigar and gave us that big Portuguese smile as he announced the drafting of Andre Ware, the gunslinger from the University of Houston.

Ware didn’t turn out to be a straight shooter, after all. His passes had a funny habit of drifting from their intended targets.

So Ware didn’t work out, but Mouse and Fontes plugged away. Eventually, Mouse left the Lions, mystified, but Fontes kept at the Run-n-Shoot, trying to emulate the success the Houston Oilers were having with it.

The Oilers, of course, had much better pass catchers. And a straight shooter, indeed, in Warren Moon.

That helped.

Fontes may have been a lot of things that weren’t so great, but he was the last Lions coach who had a plan and actually set about to implement it.

Until now.

There’s nothing clown-like or jolly or ostentatious about Jim Schwartz. He comes to the Lions with a defensive background, but that’s where the similarity to Wayne Fontes ends.

Oh, except in the plan-having department.

The Lions—and here’s where you need to fasten your seatbelt and make sure your tray is in the upright position—have a direction now. And it’s not just coming from the coach’s office.

It’s a cop out to say that, just because the Lions finished 0-16 last season, things simply can’t get any worse and that anyone would look better following such a lousy act.

To a degree, that’s true.

You're currently logged into Facebook

Do you want to share your Bleacher Report activity on Facebook?