A little X-mas cheer - brought to you by the Detroit Lions!
Tom “killer” Kowalski’s latest update on the Lions is that Mike Martz is likely to depart from the sad sack nation known as Lion-dom following this season. You can tell based on commentary from certain members of the team [the o-line throwing the offensive coordinator under the bus in this case] and the poor offensive production that patience is likely wearing thin.
While Jon Kitna always was firmly in Martz’s corner, the offensive linemen were not. One, the linemen believed Martz wasn’t just a pass-happy coordinator, but a pass-always type of guy and they don’t agree with that philosophy.
So let me get this straight to make sure I really understand what killer is “reporting” here: a shitty offensive line is calling out their main offensive coach? If that doesn’t sum up the ass-backwards state of the Detroit Lions then there’s plenty more where that came from.
The offensive linemen are actually telling Martz he needs to call more running plays! Let’s see how this stellar offensive line performed when they went up against a top 10 rush defense.
Minnesota: 3.0 ypc
Philly: 3.3 ypc
Washington: 3.4 ypc
Arizona: -2.3 ypc
Every rushing average would rank just about dead last in the NFL. It’s terrible. And the games where the Lions completely adandoned the run [the second game against the Vikes, The Eagles game and the Arizona game] they got down by a lot of points early on which made running the ball late a pretty poor decision. Here is how the Lions did in the run game against teams that were amongst the 10 worst run defenses based on ypc allowed.
Oakland: 5.1 ypc
Denver: 4.5 ypc
Bears: 4.1 ypc
KC: 4.3 ypc
Every one of those rushing averages would rank the Lions in the top half of the NFL. Mike Martz apparently understands when his team can run the ball and features the run in his offense. In the games where the Lions couldn’t run and fell behind big he’d look like an idiot if he was calling 2 yard running plays with the team down by 3 TDs. If this analysis is a little too in-depth, realize the Lions went 1-4 against teams with a top 10 rush defense but went 5-0 against teams with a bottom 10 rush defense. The goal, it would seem, would be to improve the offensive line, not shitcan the Offensive Coordinator.
Oh, then there’s team owner William Clay Ford’s demand that his offensive coordinator throw the ball to last year’s top draft pick Calvin Johnson during the Thanksgiving Day game against the Packers. Johnson then proceeded to get a bad case of alligator arms and of not running strong routes and had an embarassingly bad performance.
To make this even clearer for simplicity’s sake:
1. The Lions have one of the worst offensive lines in the NFL.
2. WCF is easily, bar none, the worst owner in professional sports.
3. Mike Martz is one of the top offensive coordinators and has been to two Super Bowls and won one.
4. Matt Millen is - with the possible exception of Isiah Thomas - the worst manager in all of professional sports.
Talk about the tail wagging the dog. Killer actually has a goldmine if he wouldn’t simply publish what the team says and instead tried to dig a little deeper. For instance, Martz had a franchise left tackle in St. Louis named Orlando Pace. Why haven’t the Lions made an effort to draft one? They could have drafted Joe Thomas in this past draft. The left tackle would have made the offense much better than it is right now.
Thomas has allowed one sack all season. The Lions as a team have allowed 54 sacks. Thomas was the AP Rookie of the Month for November. No other NFL lineman has won a player of the month or week award this season. He was there for Detroit to draft with the #2 pick. But instead Matt Millen drafted yet another wide receiver. As I mentioned earlier, Calvin Johnson is going to be a very good NFL receiver for some other franchise [following Roy Williams and Kevin Jones out of town] but the Lions had a glaring need for a left tackle who would be a cornerstone for their offense. So of course they passed on Thomas to add yet another skill position wide receiver with a top-10 draft pick.
Martz has been able to use castoffs like Shaun McDonald and Mike Furrey in his offense who have been more productive than Mike Williams and Charles Rogers. But the offensive line has continued to yield league-leading sack totals for two straight years. The Lions average 1.5 more pass attempts per game than the Cleveland Browns, yet Cleveland has allowed only 18 sacks compared to Detroit’s 54. The explanation of Martz being pass-happy is idiotic. Unfortunately Killer doesn’t actually look to see if there is any validity to the criticism; he just transcribes the quote.
Cleveland is an excellent comparison for Detroit and it’s not just because they drafted Thomas. The Browns were a dominant team in the 50s and early 60s but haven’t won a championship in over 40 years. When they returned to the NFL in 1999 they compiled the following records:
1999: 2-14
2000: 3-13
2001: 7-9
2002: 9-7 [made playoffs]
2003: 5-11
2004: 4-12
2005: 6-10
2006: 4-12
Average: 5-11, one playoff appearance
Lions: 5-11 average over same time period, one playoff appearance
The similarities are striking. One think in the Browns’ favor is they have a solid General Manager in Phil Savage. Here’s a quick look at his background before he became the man solely in charge of managing the Browns at the beginning of 2006.
Prior to entering the NFL, Savage spent the first seven years of his career in the coaching ranks at Alabama, UCLA, and with the San Antonio Riders of the World League.
Savage began his career in the NFL as an intern with the original Cleveland Browns in 1991. Savage was hired by the new Browns head coach Bill Belichick as a coach and made the transition to scouting and personnel in 1994. During his first stint in Cleveland, he worked with several talented young scouts and assistant coaches that Belichick had assembled, including Nick Saban, Kirk Ferentz, Pat Hill, and Jim Bates.
Savage worked his way up the ladder in the front office as a scout and personnel evaluator, eventually following Cleveland’s former owner Art Modell and the rest of the front office to Baltimore in 1995. Savage then played an important role in the drafting of 10 Pro Bowl players: tackle Jonathan Ogden, linebacker Ray Lewis, receiver Jermaine Lewis, linebacker Peter Boulware, defensive back Chris McAlister, running back Jamal Lewis, linebacker Adalius Thomas, tight end Todd Heap, safety Ed Reed and linebacker Terrell Suggs.
That’s 20 years of coaching, scouting and management experience. He’s turning the Browns around as they are on the verge of earning a playoff spot [depending on what the Titans do this weekend] this season. It’s clear they are in much better position going forward than the Lions are right now. They have their journeyman QB in Derek Anderson but also have their QB of the future in Brady Quinn. They have a very solid offensive line, anchored by Thomas and Eric Steinbach. They have a game-breaking receiver in Braylon Edwards who just set a franchise record for TD catches by a receiver. They’ve got a good young pass rusher in Kamerion Wimberly and solid safety in Sean Jones. They need to work on their d-line but so do the Lions.
I can’t even get mad about Matt Millen. My new nickname for Matt Millen is Chance, based on the main character from the movie Being There. Before leading the Lions Millen had absolutely no practical scouting or management experience whatsoever and all his wisdom was instead based on being an announcer who watched games and offered up commentary. It took a benefactor who was born into wealth like William Clay Ford [Ben Rand from Being There] to see something in Millen that clearly isn’t there and then bring him into the fold.
There are reports that some of the younger members of the Ford family [Doctor Dysart in this analogy] believe that Millen is oblivious as to what it takes to build a successful NFL franchise. At this late stage there are few people outside of William Clay Ford who think Millen is anything other than an incredibly poor NFL executive. Given Ford’s dysmal record as an owner of a professional sports franchise there’s no reason to think he knows something that we don’t.
So I can’t blame Chance Millen so much for being completely oblivious; he could have had a great career as a professional watcher [Chance’s famous line is “I like to watch”] and commenter. The only person you can really criticize for the decision to hire Chance and to elevate him to his place atop the Lions organization is William Clay Ford.
So Merry Christmas, Chance. May your top pick in the upcoming NFL draft bring you another skill player on offense. I’m sure William Clay Ford and your offensive line will have some very valuable input in this regard.
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[…] There’s one thing I find particularly irritating about Chance Millen’s stewardship of the Detroit Lions: his inability to learn from past mistakes when something doesn’t work. I mean the guy had literally zero experience prior to being handed the keys to the most dysfunctional professional sports franchise in the country. So you’d think one thing he’d pay particular attention to was learning from his many bone-headed decisions. The most obvious example is all the wide receivers he’s drafted with his #1 draft pick over the years. But he’s following a similar error he made when Ted Tollner was hired in 2005 to be the offensive coordinator. […]
[…] Here’s what I said about Mike Martz’s purported lack of commitment to the running game while he was the offensive coordinator in Detroit: Here is how the Lions did in the run game against teams that were amongst the 10 worst run defenses based on ypc allowed. […]