NFC Norris preview: Debacle in Detroit
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by user Neatesager
The "responsible" and "legitimate" sports media wouldbe offering detailed, comprehensive inside looks atall 32 NFL teams as training camps open this week.
Well, yours truly simply doesn't have the time nor the interest for such an exercise. Truth be known, it's still five weeks to the start of the regular season and I'm already Bourqued (hat tip to my friends Neil Acharya and Ben Milledge) about all the "off-season questions" facing each team in the NFL, or as some of us call it, The Most Overhyped Sport In The World.
Yours truly could really care less right now about who's the favourite to win the AFC South, or how Carson Palmer is going to come back from that thermonuclear knee injury he suffered in the playoffs, or which first-round pick just ended his holdout.
Besides, if you want real team previews, there's going to plenty posted here and elsewhere on the web. Out of Left Field's NFL rundown will be confined to formulating some radical hypothesis where the post-Daunte Culpepper Minnesota Vikings, with limited talent at the offensive skill positions and some holes on defence, win the NFC North -- AKA the NFC Norris -- for the first time since 2000.
Basically it involves running down the Vikings' divisional foes -- the Detroit Lions, Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers -- and explaining why they have been, and will continue to be, terrible.
Detroit gets the dubious honour of going first, since no one remembers the last time the Lions were first in anything.
THE DETROIT LIONS . . . the fightin' Lions. Making fun of the Lions is almost passé since with the exception of the Barry Sanders era (and they weren't even that good then), the Lions have been so bad for so long. Icons of ineptitude, sultans of surpassing suckitude, you get the idea. Somehow, they still sell tickets, but this may be since their fans view the Lions with the same morbid fascination Michanders usually reserve for gazing upon downtown Detroit.
At least this year, few are pretending that it will be any different for the Motown's Super Virgins. New coach Rod Marinelli is the latest man who will, no matter how hard he tries, be reduced from brilliant young coach to laughingstock who will be begging to return to assistant-coaching anonymity inside of three years. Remember Marty Morningwheg? Well, no one else does.
This is the case since Matt Millen somehow has maintained his job as the Honululu Blue's general manager. Millen specializes in winning praise for his draft choices, usually from mildly amnesiac broadcasters and columnists who inevitably forget that they praised Millen's selections the year before, but those players didn't do anything once they got on the field. You name 'em: Dominic Raiola, Boss Bailey, Teddy Lehman, Kevin Jones, Mike Williams, the oft-injured Charles Rogers. Millen drafts can't-missprospects.... and they miss, or turn out to be merely decent players. Somehow he keeps his job.
Like the continued popularity of Regis Philbin, it is one of those phenomenons for which there is no logical explanation: It just is.
Mike Williams is another category entirely -- the 2005 first-rounder out of USC has apparently had so much trouble keeping his weight down that there was talk he might have to be converted from wideout to tight end. (As one commenter points out, it was just talk.) No one starts out at tight end, but no one converts to it at the NFL level, either.
The snowball effect of the Williams debacle is going to carry over for a while. Millen jettisoned quarterback Joey Harrington after last season, but the spectre of Williams led to the Lions passing up on his ex-USC teammate Matt Leinart. Detroit's latest new starting quarterback is Jon Kitna, whom you might remember from being the buy who bought time for Matt Hasselback to develop in Seattle and Palmer in Cincinnati. Nice caretaker QB, but not the guy you win with. The other newcomer, Josh McCown, delivered a memorable (for all the wrong reasons, if you're a Vikings fan) win for the Cardinals three years ago, but hasn't had consistent success as a NFL starter.
Winning now really isn't a concern for Detroit, largely since its personnel, all-around, is pretty small-town cheap. The big move to upgrade its collander of an offensive line involved throwing $4 million at guard Ross Verba, who hasn't played at all in two of the past three seasons. (This could only happen when Millen is involved.)
Offensively, there's some intrigue with Mike Martz coming in as offensive co-ordinator, but how much will he be able to do with the personnel on hand, especially the weak line, remains to be seen.
Defensively, some will point out that first-round pick, linebacker Ernie Sims, is a good fit for the cover-2 defensive scheme Marinelli is installing. True. That said, you can get good linebackers almost anywhere in the draft, so Millen jumped the gun there too. Detroit allowed the most points in the division last year (345), and considering who else plays in the NFC Norris, that's quite the accomplishment.
Bottom line: The Lions are doomed. Pencil them in for another 5-11 year.
Deep-down, in a place we don't like to talk about at parties, we need the Lions to suck out loud. Following the NFL just wouldn't be the same if, on Thanksgiving Day, you didn't get to watch a 4-7 Lions team either (a) lose 35-7 to a real team or (b) inexplicably knock off a playoff-bound opponent and declare afterwards, "this was our Super Bowl."
For the Lions, the Turkey Day game almost always is their Super Bowl, since they've never been to the big game in its 40-year history. Does this make the Lions organization The 40-Year-0ld Virgin of the NFL?
Next victims:Chicago Bears,Green Bay Packers.
Related:Blog Blast Past No. 2: Damn Vikings (July 17)
(For more articles like this one, click on Out of Left Field, especially if you're Canadian.)
Date
Wed 08/02/06, 9:24 am EST
