Detroit Lions’ Rebuild
Ryan Griffin: But I will say, I think I have I think I have a way for the Detroit Lions to get out of this hell that we’re in because I know you subscribed to this and just talks that we’ve had privately are as frustrating as the lines have been, throughout the Dan Campbell era.
Three ones last year don’t look like they’re gonna get a whole lot more than that this year with the way things are going, you feel like this rebuild is different than the rebuilds in the past. Do you feel differently about Dan Campbell and Brad Holmes than you did Quinn-Tricia, or did you do Mayhew and Schwartz or Mayhew and Caldwell?
Matthew Bassin: I do. And. I said it throughout all of our time on the Sports Carnage Podcast when it was still relevant at the time. It was when William Clay Ford was the owner that as long as William Clay Ford was the owner, the Detroit Lions were never gonna do anything because William Clay Ford didn’t give a dam about the football team, didn’t give a dam about the city of Detroit.
He liked to fill his pockets, and that’s all he got out of it. And you could. All you have to do is go look at the renewal contract that he gave to Matt Millen after he was literally the worst in the history of his job in the NFL after five years. And William Clay Ford gave him a five-year extension. Now he was fired in his third year of that five-year extension.
Thank God. But you can’t do that. You cannot give a guy a five-year extension when he is literally the worst in the history of his job title, which is what Matt Millen was. So for me, it was, until William Clay Ford is gone, the Detroit Lions aren’t gonna do anything. I have felt different about this Detroit Lions regime and rebuilding because Sheila went for outside help.
She went to Spielman. She went to Barry Sanders, and she went to people that were gonna be outside the organization. It is outside help. I don’t think these guys were ever consulted before in any way, shape, or form. I think she took an outside look at things as far as that. We need to find people that know the game and know what they’re doing.
And yeah, obviously, getting a voice of a legend who might not be working so much in the game, Barry Sanders, isn’t gonna be all that helpful, but getting a different taste in general for what you’re doing to me is helpful. Getting an outside opinion on what’s going on. Cause what the Detroit Lions have been doing ain’t working.
And here’s what we’ve been doing, exactly what the fans want to have to happen right now, which is Fire Dan Campbell in his second year. So let me remind everybody what we have, what has brought us to this point. Because since Wayne Fontes, and he was literally our last long-tenured head coach. He was the head coach from 89 to 96.
That’s a long tenure in the Detroit Lions’ history, and he was a 500 head coach. After that. It was Bobby Ross for three and a half years. It was Gary Moeller for a year. It was Marty Mornhinweg for two years. It was Steve Mariucci for three years or two and a half years. Dick Jauron finished off the year Rod Marinelli for a few years.
Jim Schwartz for four. Jim Caldwell for four, and then Bevel for a blink. And then you had after Matt Patricia, obviously, with that, all fell. And then Dan Campbell. So you’re looking at head coach, after head coach, after head coach, after head coach, and they’re all gonna bring their own ideas to the party. Now we can go look through all the different front office execs that have been there as well.
There aren’t as many. These guys seem to get a longer leash than the head coach will. But you are continuously rebuilding or calling it a rebuild. I’m not gonna call any of those a rebuild that was just sweeping up the same old crap again and again, which is why I liked what I saw from this regime. For example, is that you are not just sweeping up the same crap.
This was a completely fresh start. We got rid of our franchise quarterback that we had been praying and hoping for forever beforehand. Finally got him in Matthew Stafford, and we let him go because this was gonna be yet another head coach for the poor bastard as the quarterback of the Detroit Lions.
So now you have a fresh start right then and there. People might not wanna look at it completely as a fresh start because you got Jared Goff, The guy went to a Super Bowl, and he’s making all this money, and the Detroit Lions didn’t sign that contract. The LA Rams signed that contract. Or the St. Louis Rams, whichever one you wanna call it, they signed that contract.
Goff fooled them. Good for Goff; he’s getting paid. He’s not worth the money, and it’s money. It’s dead. It’s capped. That’s gonna get let go when he gets let go, and we can deal with the Goff lovers and haters later. He’s not the guy for the future, and now we are getting rid of the Quinn-Tricia guys that need to be let go because they weren’t the right picks either at the time, but I’m seeing the right things happening.
In the sense of how we are building this team. You look at the two drafts under this new regime, and six of the eight picks in this last draft were on defense. Well, guess what? The Detroit Lions have been one of the worst defenses in the last four years. They were 26, 31st, and right now, 32nd. Those are terrible numbers, obviously, and so you can’t expect them to all of a sudden be a great defense.
A defense takes time to build. An offense you can fix a lot quicker. You get a decent quarterback and a couple of pass-catching weapons, and you’ve got some semblance of an offense as long as the O line can do some blocking, which we couldn’t for the longest time, but it’s looking like we’re finally able to. But you look at what this regime has done, the last two drafts, four outta seven picks, 21 6 outta eight picks, and 22 have been on defense.
They are trying to. The problem, it hasn’t worked yet. You are relying on first and second-year players to be your leaders. That usually doesn’t work out well in the NFL. It’s usually the vets that are the guys that are the leaders and are leading the way for the first and second-year players. But right now, our defense is so bad. We are relying on those first and second-year players to lead the way for us. And guess what? It’s not really working right now.
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