The Draft and The Lions That Never Were

I have been a die-hard Lions fan since 1989, my sophomore year in high school. That was the year the Lions drafted the most dangerous offensive weapon to ever play football and easily the most electrifying football player of my generation—Barry Sanders.

During that time, if I recall correctly, the Lions were credited with being the best drafting team in the NFL.

As I remember, the Detroit Lions had drafted more active players and starters in the NFL than any other team. I remember being floored when I read that.

It seemed that the issue with the Lions was never scouting or drafting, it was holding on to the talent. Those were the halcyon days of Ron Hughes and Wayne Fontes, and talented, yet mediocre teams punctuated by the superhuman efforts of one Barry Sanders.

Then came Matt Millen and the dark ages.

Straight from the broadcasting booth and into the front office like the fourth horseman of the apocalypse, Millen descended upon our city and our Lions, and plunged us into the kind of depths our mediocre and moribund, yet lovable, franchise had never seen.

As I think back to the Millen era of terror, I constantly ask; myself; how was this possible? How could the Lions get worse? The answer was always in front of me; the draft!

No one thing in the NFL can change a franchise so completely as good or bad drafts.

The bulk of a team's roster has to come from the draft. Why? Because of the salary cap. Rookies are the cheapest players in the league. So you need to fill your roster with productive rookies to stay under the cap and still fill the roster out.

When Millen came in, he promptly fired the head of college scouting, Ron Hughes, who went to the Steelers and helped them draft players that took them to multiple Super Bowls.

Just as an aside, two things I've always noticed about the Steelers over the years:

1) They are never bad. They suck if they go 8-8, and when they do, they don't do so two years in a row.

2) They lose free agent after free agent after free agent and never run out of players, especially at linebacker. Why is that? They draft well. The Lions don't. Not anymore anyway.

My specific beef with the Millen Lions is not the busts we drafted, it's the players we passed on to draft the busts.

It's bad enough to screw yourself by drafting bad players. Its another thing to pass on players that would have filled needs to draft some guys that you didn't need.

A quick history:

To draft Joey Harrington, we passed on Quentin Jammer.

We needed a corner that year. I think Terry Fair had gotten injured and was out indefinitely. Since then, Jammer is still a fixture in the Charger secondary. Meanwhile Harrington is lucky to be on a roster.

To draft Charles Rogers, we passed on Andre Johnson.

This made no sense whatsoever. We had just hired Marriuchi. The "west coast" offense was entrenched. Johnson was 6' 3", 230 lbs, ran a 4.3, and specialized in RAC (run after catch) yardage and running the short to intermediate part of the route tree.

Not to mention the fact he came from the U (U of Miami), a receiver factory. Big receivers that specialize in running after the catch were made for the west coast, and we picked the skinny kid that only ran fly routes, and skinny posts in college.

Not to mention the marijuana thing that was being reported prior to the draft. Since then, Johnson has been to multiple pro bowls and Rogers can't stay out of jail or make a CFL roster.

To draft Mike Williams we passed on Shawne Merriman

Yeah, I don't really have to go into that do I?

But Millen's ineptitude didn't stop with the first round.

To draft Kalimba Edwards he passed on Clinton Portis in the second round.  

The thing that really burned me up about these repeated miscues was that every one of the players we passed on were needed players that were carrying the same grade or higher than the player we drafted.

The breadth and depth of our incompetence in the draft explains our descent to 0-16.

We have drafted two starters on our offensive line. We have drafted zero starters on our defensive line.

Our roster has no internally drafted second or third round players on it that weren't rookies in the last two years. There were never any mid to late round draftees that developed or contributed significantly or even made the team.

For Pete's sake, how many first rounders aren't even in the league now? 

To wrap it all up, the Lions used to be a competent draft team, which was enough to ensure mediocrity. Then we became an incompetent draft team which was enough to ensure 0-16 and our place in sports history.