After a brief hiatus following the draft, wherein I completed some minor renovations on my home and then sold it, I am happy to be back at the grind with your daily dose of Lions news. Plenty of people fall on both sides of the Lions draft overall, and I agree with both of them. I both love and hate the Lions draft for numerous reasons. Getting A’Shawn Robinson in the second could end up being an incredible steal for the Lions, but I didn’t love the Taylor Decker pick at the time, and the Kool-Aid having worn off, I still don’t love it. I’m sure he will be a fine right tackle, and you do need one of those on the field, so I’m not saying it was a wasted pick. I understand that football is won at the line, and the rest of what happens is allowed to happen by the results that the team achieves there, but I would have liked a bit of love to be given to a few other positions, not just the trenches again, and again. No offense meant to the Lions undrafted free agent crew, but 5 feet 10 inch 180lb players who don’t time well, and 6 feet 4 inch 210lb players that time well but can’t catch, are not really what the Lions needed at the receiver position, no matter how great their twitter handles are. I’m looking at you @McFresh83. Here is your Lions news fix for the day:
Your Daily Dose of Detroit Lions News
Ziggy Ansah is motivated by two key things; family and pride. They are the two things that never really go away, which looks good for Ansah’s future. According to Ansah, his long term contract situation is being pushed at least a year down the road, which just makes good business sense for the team, as I outlined here.
Ian Wells is a hard work and hustle guy, with impressive athletic ability that the Lions signed as an undrafted free agent rookie after the draft to hopefully find some role in their secondary.
Andre Caldwell was added to an extremely crowded Lions wide receiver group. These are not great players being added, but unlike last year, it is going to be difficult to make this team. Nobody is being handed a position by a lack of competing bodies.
Pat Caputo believes that the lions draft was bizarre; citing that Ruddock is a bad pick, and that Snapalicious would have been there in the seventh and possibly even been available to the Lions as an undrafted free agent. Given that a sixth round pick has a league average chance of being tendered as a restricted free agent three years from now somewhere in the 25-30% range, my thought on the matter is that if the only problems you have with a team’s draft come that late, they are irrelevant problems.
LeCharles Bentley says that undrafted free agent offensive lineman Chase Farris out of Ohio State is a good player. If the Hog Whisperer says it (Bentley is likely the best off-season trainer an offensive lineman could hope to employ), that’s all I needed to hear. Cornelius Lucas and Corey Robinson might be in trouble at the bottom of the tackle depth chart.
Some of the Lions veteran players may be in trouble in the wake of the draft. While I feel for anyone who seems likely to lose their job, it is a really nice change to see legitimate threats to established veterans being added. Even if it is just at the long snapper position. Don Muhlbach has been the perfect long snapper, but I can see why the team might consider moving on from the 12 year veteran. It’s a position that only matters if you don’t have a good one, and having a repeat of the kicker fiasco can not happen. Special teams need to be taken care of too.
I sometimes forget how impossible it was to tackle Barry Sanders. The throwback Thursday video this week on the Lions’ website reminds me how I got in this mess as a Lions fan. A rookie running back who misses out on the rushing title by ten yards while carrying the ball 90 fewer times than Christian Okoye, the league’s leading rusher? The parallel with the way his career ended, second all time in rushing yards, not wanting to beat Jim Brown’s record, kind of hurts all these years later.
There is your fix boys and girls, after that slight bump in the road, the Morning Intel is back, giving you that Lions news you crave, gathered in one place for your convenience. @a5hcrack on twitter, and on /r/detroitlions. Just because I love you guys, have some Barry Sanders highlights, but turn down the sound…… the NFL has gotten a lot better at choosing their musical accompaniment over time. It may not be Lions news, but it is fun to watch.
