What the Oshiomogho Atogwe Signing Means To the Detroit Lions

The St. Louis Rams have resigned veteran safety Oshiomogho Atogwe after three weeks of his testing the free agent waters.

Many of you Detroit Lions fans have expressed disappointment in the Lions’ inability to bring him in to shore up the Lions’ suspect secondary.

So in response, I’m going to tell you what it means to the team that they were unable to bring him on board.

Nothing.

Actually, I take that back. It means that Atogwe will be on the field when we play the Rams in Week Five. That’s about it.

Now let me explain to you what it is I’m not saying right now.

I am not suggesting that Atogwe is not a great football player. I am also not suggesting that the Lions secondary is a complete, high-level unit. I’m not even saying the Lions shouldn’t have taken a run at him (they did).

What I am saying is that the Lions have as much chance of signing Atogwe now as they did on his first day of free-agency. None.

There are two primary things a free agent looks for when he’s on the market: money and a championship squad. The Lions could offer neither.

Atogwe settled for money when he resigned with his former team. The terms of the deal were undisclosed, but it was a five-year deal (for a safety who just turned 29, by the way), and you can bet he got paid very well.

For those who think the Lions could have beaten whatever the offer was, let me ask one question: How many draftees have the Lions signed? Wouldn’t that money be better-spent on getting Ndamukong Suh and Jahvid Best under contract?

See, in the long run, this is a good thing. Atogwe off the market is just one less distraction to what has, thus far, been a successful rebuilding project in Detroit.

Signing Atogwe wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world (that would be trading for Albert Haynesworth), but the Lions are not losing anything by not signing him.

If anything, they gain the ability to develop a quality safety out of the current stable of Ko Simpson, Daniel Bullocks, and Marquand Manuel. Each of these players showed promise at some point, but all were limited by injury last year (like Atogwe himself). Nevertheless, all should enter the 2010 season healthy.

So rather than bemoan the loss of Atogwe (which, as I’ve mentioned, is not a “loss” at all), turn you eyes toward the future. We may yet have a solid safety to play alongside Louis Delmas.

Or maybe we don’t. But the point of “rebuilding” is that a team with many holes does NOT have to fill them all in in one season.

Because it’s much more important that those holes get filled properly, not quickly. Atogwe might have been a proper fill, but he would have been an expensive shortcut.

And as I’ve said in the past, when you’ve found a proper path to rebuild, shortcuts can get you lost.