Shawne Merriman And His Personal Battle Of Wounded Knee

So Shawne Merriman says he wants to play football. On a mangled knee, one that could cave in on him at anytime, according to doctors. One that could ruin his football forever.

Fine.

But that doesn’t mean that San Diego Chargers head coach Norv Turner has to play Merriman.

It won’t happen, of course, but Turner could play the ultimate trump card — his decision as to who plays and who doesn’t — and keep Merriman, the young, prized linebacker, on the sidelines when the regular season opens on Sunday. That’s pretty much all that can be done at this point to prevent a 24-year-old from sabotaging his own future.

Merriman has been diagnosed with a tear in his lateral collateral ligament as well as a grade-three tear of his posterior collateral ligament in his left knee. Four doctors, four of them, have all recommended that Merriman have surgery forthwith, thus meaning he’d miss the entire 2008 season. Projected recovery time for such a surgery is estimated to be about six months or so.

I’m surmising that the only reasons Merriman got four medical opinions are: a) the first three didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear, and b) the fifth wasn’t likely to, either. So he stopped while he was behind, at four.

It’s the old adage about there being a difference between being heroic and brave, and being just plain dumb.

There’s no telling the heights Merriman can attain in the NFL. It’s not exaggerating to suggest that he could, once retired, go down as one of the Top 5 greatest defensive players in league history.

But not if he wrecks his career before his 25th birthday. Then he goes down as a cautionary tale — a poster child for listening to what the doctor tells you.

I’m not sure what Merriman is trying to prove here. That he’s tough? As far as I’m concerned, all who set foot on an NFL field are tough. Stand on a sideline and watch — and LISTEN — to the hitting that goes on, with the 120 or so train wrecks that occur in any given game, and you won’t ever again question toughness. Now, there are levels of it, for sure. Some have higher thresholds for pain, for example, than others. But there are no cowards on that field.

Is he trying to prove his commitment and desire? With four doctors saying, “SURGERY”, I don’t think opting for surgery would mean you’re any less committed to the cause. If anything, it shows that you have long-term thinking in mind, which is better for the team, ultimately.

Is he being motivated by money or outside influences? It wouldn’t appear to be so. I’d hate to think that there are those within the Chargers organization who are pressuring him to play in the face of such disturbing medical findings. And if Merriman doesn’t have the spine to tell those types to go screw themselves, then that’s a sad commentary, too.

Merriman says that his decision to play is, simply, because he’s a football player and that he’s “stubborn as hell” — his words. He says that if you give a football player the option to play, then he’s going to play.

Two things about that flawed statement. One, who’s giving him the option to play? The reports scream DON’T PLAY. If playing is an option, it’s kind of like the option you have to put your hand in boiling water on the stove. Sure, you can do it — no one is preventing you, but … why? Second, if you polled the players in the league, I’d be shocked if even 1 in 4 would opt to play given such a medical diagnosis.

If this was the week leading up to the Super Bowl, then maybe that’s a different deal. I can understand the temptation to “leave it all out there” for the sake of 60 minutes that could crown you as a champion. But sources say that if Merriman goes through with his threat to start the season, the chances of him finishing it are very slim. The wounded knee is like an expanding balloon that could go “pop” at any moment.

Merriman acknowledges that he’s going to have surgery. It’s just going to be later, rather than sooner. How much later? Nobody knows for sure. Could be next week, if the knee goes pop on Opening Day. Could be in October. And yes, it could be as late as the end of the season, if he survives it, slim chances and all. But even if he makes it through the season, there’s no telling what additional damage he may have done to the knee, thus possibly turning a six-month recovery into a 12-month one, or even longer. If he recovers at all.

There’s no sadder story in professional sports than the one about the guy who never reached his potential because of injury. Or foolishness.

Shawne Merriman says he is “stubborn as hell.” If he chooses to play, I’d substitute another word for stubborn that also begins with “stu”. But that’s just me.

NFL’s "White Out" At Home Puts Me In A Dark Mood

I’m a traditional kind of guy when it comes to sports. Hence me detesting the DH in baseball, no jump balls in college basketball, and voting for the baseball All-Star game in any way other than with the chad-filled ballots at the ballpark.

Tradition, to me, also says that home teams wear their dark jerseys in the NFL.

You can’t even tell who the home team is anymore. It seems that only the NFC North teams (read: the “black and blue”, old NFC Central) abide by this rule, and wear dark at home. Everywhere else, it’s apparently “chic” to wear white at home.

The only teams I gave free passes to when it came to who can wear white at home were the Dallas Cowboys and Cleveland Browns — both out of tradition. I remember the old St. Louis Cardinals would try to take the Cowboys out of their comfort zone and wear their white jerseys in St. Louis, forcing the Cowboys to wear their rarely-used blue jerseys. It usually didn’t work. As far as the Browns go, they’ve been wearing white at home since the days of Jimmy Brown. Sometimes they’ll slip the brown jerseys on in Cleveland. I don’t think I’ve EVER seen the ‘Boys wear blue in Irving.

The Lions only wore white at home once, that I know of. It was Thanksgiving Day, 1970. The Raiders were in town, and in those days, Oakland’s white jerseys had silver numbers on them. The TV folks thought the silver-on-white combo wouldn’t look good for the nationally-televised game, so they asked the Lions to wear white so the Raiders could wear black. The Lions did, and they beat the Raiders 28-14 wearing their road whites at Tiger Stadium.

The Vikings always wear purple at home. The Packers wear green. The Bears have only worn white at home on a handful of occasions. Beyond that, it’s pretty much up for grabs, who wears white at home.

OK, who’s the home team in this photo? Not so fast….

The Bengals donned white yesterday against the Lions in Cincinnati. And the Bengals were one of the final holdouts; they could be counted on to wear dark at home, as supposedly mandated.

Why does this bother me so?

Not sure. I guess I just like knowing, immediately, who’s home and who’s away when I turn a game on. I have NFL Sunday Ticket, which means I am festooned with every single freaking game on my television set each week (which rocks, by the way). But when you tune in, you have to gather yourself and find the scoreboard graphic to see which team is at home. It used to be that the colors of the jerseys was the tip-off.

I guess I just like knowing that there is a right way and a wrong way to do things. The NBA teams wear white at home. So does baseball. That’s fine. Hockey teams wear dark at home. Also fine. I really don’t care which is which, as long as we settle on one way and stick to it. The NFL is almost reversing entirely, with more teams wearing white at home than don’t. Plus, don’t dark jerseys look more menacing on a football team? And shouldn’t those more menacing jerseys be worn in front of the home crowd?

Frankly, if I were the Lions back in 1970, I would have told NBC where to put their request to have the Raiders wear their black jerseys in Detroit. The nerve!

Speaking of black jerseys, let’s hear three cheers for the Lions’ black alternate jerseys being retired. Those were God-awful.

NFL Pre-Season: Wake Me When It’s Over

I was going to start off this column by presenting you with a list. It was going to contain those things in life that are less compelling than NFL exhibition games played in August. Then, I was going to crank out my 900 or so words from there.

Well, it’s been about 15 minutes and I haven’t come up with anything yet.

I tried, believe me. I considered such things as five-day forecasts, anything to do with the ladies on “The View”, and watching paint dry. Then I thought, maybe tofu, any furniture sale, or a piece of mail addressed to Resident. Perhaps, my mind went on, Geraldo Rivera, corn flakes without banana on top, or any song by Lionel Ritchie.

Naaah.

Exhibition football, or pre-season football – take your pick – is the most rotten, unprovoking, irrelevant, and wretched creation ever foistered on the general public. And that’s saying something, when you’re talking about a society that has produced liver and onions. And Ann Coulter.

That the National Football League is allowed to charge full price for these pretend games is akin to placing Splenda in the nation’s sugar bags and calling it tit for tat.

Here’s a typical pre-season game situation: each team plays its starters for maybe two series each, in the first quarter. And with a dumb-downed playbook. And with absolutely no inclination by either team to fully reveal its arsenal of weapons or plays because, it’s well, the FREAKING EXHIBITION SEASON.

Then, the second stringers come in, and after halftime, after you’ve paid your $8 for a beer (no such things as “exhibition prices”, natch) and $7 for nachos, you’re treated to football played by guys who would only play in a regular season game if there was a nuclear holocaust and they somehow survived, like cockroaches.

Watching on TV might be cheaper, but no less harmful to your mental well-being. Even the regular network analysts hardly show up; the TV teams are mostly minor league, too. The Lions have experimented with several of their former players to assist in the broadcast booth for the four exhibitions played every August, and the results have been as even as a metro Detroit road. This year it’s Desmond Howard, who says things like “Way to go, Deeetroit Lions!” Or at least he did, when I suffered a brain fart and tuned in to the game against the New York Giants last week. Less than sixty seconds later, I came to my senses and switched channels. Maybe even to Geraldo Rivera; not sure.

It’s amazing, really, that you could take the New England Patriots and the Giants, put them in a Super Bowl, and have a game for the ages – and then pit them against each other six months later on a Thursday night in August and have all the allure of your grandmother in a bikini (unless your grandmother happens to be Christie Brinkley, I apologize for the image I just conjured in your mind).

But that’s what you get when exhibition football happens. I was around, but have conveniently blocked from my memory the days when teams actually played six of these monstrosities instead of the current four. In 1978, when the regular season schedule expanded to 16 games from 14, two of the exhibitions were scrapped to keep the total allotment to 20 games. I say we split the atom again, and reduce the pre-season to two games per team, and increase the regular season to 18 games. My opinion.

The NFL Network, bless their desperate-for-programming hearts, have been showing pre-season games – which is nothing more than pirating the local TV feed and presenting it for the nation’s consumption, complete with the local graphics, trivia questions, and deer-in-the-headlights sideline reporters who would be outclassed by the latest freshman class at the Specs Howard Institute.

Again, in a moment of weakness, my remote thumb stopped on a pre-season game between the St. Louis Rams and the Tennessee Titans last week. There were under two minutes to play, the game well in hand for the Titans, who held the ball deep in St. Louis territory. But instead of running a play, the Titans decided to simply snap the ball and take a knee three times in a row, to run out the clock.

“Good move,” one of the minor league announcers said with sincerity and total seriousness. “Don’t want to get anyone hurt here.”

Who are you going to hurt? A fourth-string lineman? Anyone playing in the waning moments of a blowout pre-season game isn’t anyone you’re going to miss – no offense to those players or their immediate families. Besides, that’s the other cockamamie thing about pre-season football. The mantra, right out of the gate, is “don’t get anyone hurt.” But this is football, people. Playing pro football games with the pie-in-the-sky goal of not getting anyone hurt is like taking a shower and hoping not to get wet. Not gonna happen. Every year, some poor team has to deal with an injury suffered by one of their key players, or more, that occurred in one of these totally meaningless matches.

The Lions had their 1979 season torpedoed before it began, thanks to a knee injury suffered by QB Gary Danielson in the final exhibition game, knocking him out for the season. The Lions finished 2-14 with a rookie quarterback leading them. More recently, RB James Stewart had his career ended by an ill-timed shoulder injury, incurred when he wasn’t even supposed to be on the field, yet was left in the game by an admittedly wrong head coach Steve Mariucci in the final pre-season game of 2003. Thanks, Mooch.

Coaches will tell you that they need the games to evaluate their players and make choices as to who makes the team and who doesn’t. Fair enough. Just do it in two games, not four. Any coach worth his salt should be able to make up his mind after several weeks of training camp and 120 minutes of live game action.

And if they can’t, then sentence them to watch these games on television. In their entirety. With the mute button disabled.

Giants’ Win Big, But Not Bigger Than Namath’s Jets’ Upset

Yesterday’s Super Bowl was truly super. That makes the Big Game 20-for-42, by my count, in being super as opposed to being a dud. And, frankly, this one might have been in the top three or four in terms of excitement and history and with the upset factor thrown into the mix.

The gushing and overstatements and forgetting of history has begun, however.

This is the biggest upset in Super Bowl history!

That’s what some would have you believe.

Even usually sane, right-thinking media folks are getting sucked into the New York Giants’ 17-14 win over the New England Patriots yesterday. They’d have you forget the biggest upset of all-time, in order to force-feed this game into that spot.

For purposes of an objective argument, “upset” should be classified as any game in which the underdog comes out victorious — based on the pre-game point spread.

Using that as a barometer, the Giants — 14-point ‘dogs in most books — have indeed pulled off one of the biggest upsets. The 2001-02 Pats, when they beat the St. Louis Rams, and the 1997-78 Denver Broncos — upsetters of the Green Bay Packers, are being mentioned along with the 2007-08 Giants in that regard, mainly based on point spreads.

Oh, and the New York Jets are mentioned, too — the 1968-69 team of Joe Namath — almost as an afterthought.

Wrong!

Don’t even go there with me. Don’t tell me that what Eli Manning and Company did to the 18-0 Pats, while impressive, trumps what Namath’s AFL Jets did to the mighty NFL Baltimore Colts in Miami in January 1969 (Super Bowl III).

There’s the point spread, for one — though that’s hardly the only reason. The 13-1 Colts were 18-19 point favorites over the Jets. But the NFL was 2-0 in Super Bowls, with the Packers easily handling the Kansas City Chiefs and Oakland Raiders in I and II. Both games cemented, in many people’s minds, the NFL’s dominance over the AFL. There was little reason to believe otherwise, frankly.

Yet Namath, and the Jets defense, rather easily handled the Colts. It was stunning, really, how easily the Jets beat the Colts. The final score was 16-7. The Colts contributed to the cause with turnovers, but the Jets probably would have won anyway. The AFL proved it could play with the NFL. And, for good measure, the Chiefs beat the Minnesota Vikings the next year to even the NFL-AFL Super Bowl record at 2-2 before the 1970 merger.

But the Jets’ win was landmark, and was not only the biggest upset in Super Bowl history, but one of the greatest upsets in sports history. It wasn’t the 1980 US Hockey Team beating the Russians, but it was pretty damn close.

So don’t let the gushers and forgetters of history con you. Yesterday’s win by the Giants was amazing, but not the most amazing. The ’68 Jets will probably always hold that title.

January Football Now Means Something Else For NFL’s One-Time Great Teams

It was just a question, asked glibly, but the words cut to the bone of the die-hards of Da Bums in Brooklyn.

“The Dodgers…are they still in the league?”

It’s a quote I’ve known about for years and years, but only now, as I verify its source on the Internet, do I learn that it was uttered 74 years ago this week, on January 24, 1934. The questioner was New York Giants manager Bill Terry, and he was curious as to the existence of the rival Dodgers. The remark didn’t play well among Dodgers fans.

Terry was talking about possible contenders for the pennant in the upcoming ’34 season. When the matter of the Dodgers was brought up, Terry delivered his zinger.

74 years ago this week, Terry zinged the Dodgers

I’d like to propose a new question, this one for followers of the NFL.

“The Oakland Raiders…are they still in the league?”

I’d also like to ask it of the San Francisco 49ers, and of the Miami Dolphins.

Their fans may get mad at me all they want – still I’d like to ask it.

The truth is that those teams are, indeed, still in the NFL – but they’re not in it the way they used to be. Not even close. They’re all making news this January, but it’s the equivalent of the police blotter in comparison to their long ago days in the society pages.

January used to be glory time for the Raiders, 49ers, and Dolphins. It was the month when they were either crowned NFL champs, or at least played for the opportunity. They owned the first month of the year, often lending it to one another, the same way the Yankees and Dodgers used to swap October back and forth in baseball.

January meant Joe Montana and Jim Plunkett and Bob Griese and Dan Marino. It meant Jerry Rice and Cliff Branch and Paul Warfield and Mark “Super” Duper. And it usually meant that one of these three franchises would be clutching the Vince Lombardi Trophy in a parade a couple days after a Super Bowl.

But here’s what January is giving us in 2008.

The 49ers, five years removed from their last playoff game, fired their offensive coordinator and hired Mad Mike Martz, erstwhile Lions coordinator and certified genius. It wasn’t long before Martz’s hiring was adjudged to be a desperate move by a desperate organization, and one that it will regret in relatively short order.

The Dolphins, winners of one game in 2007, cleaned house. They hired Bill Parcells to run the show, and it didn’t take long for the firings to begin. The GM and the coach have been replaced, for starters. Some reports indicate that Parcells, about as qualified as anyone on this planet to resurrect moribund NFL franchises, placed a couple of phone calls to the Lions, who didn’t show any interest. The 1-15 Dolphins were amenable. Which means that Miami will soon leap frog the Lions, once again. Just a matter of time.

Then there’s the Raiders.

Al Davis is still the patriarch/Don of this very dysfunctional franchise. Then again, the Raiders have always been dysfunctional, even when they were winning. One of their favorite ploys was to take the league’s ne’er-do-wells and resurrect their careers, thru the magic elixir of wearing silver and black and conforming to a “Commitment to Excellence”. Many of the players on the champion Raider teams were deemed too old or too naughty by other squads. But then they signed to play for Davis’s team and while they may have indeed been too old or too naughty, they nonetheless found a way to win at remarkably high clips.

Davis: Losing more than football games in recent years?


The Raiders, somehow, made it to the Super Bowl as recently as five years ago. They lost – their first championship loss since Super Bowl II – and things have gone haywire ever since. The Super Bowl coach was fired a year later, and Davis is now going thru coaches at a rate that would make George Steinbrenner blush.

The latest victim is a bright young man named Lane Kiffin.

Kiffin is the son of longtime Tampa Bay defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin. And dad is having a much better year, already, than the kid. Monte Kiffin just inked a contract extension with the Bucs; Lane is being asked to turn in his playbook by Davis.

Lane Kiffin, in his first year as a head coach, went 4-12 with the 2007 Raiders. Now it’s being reported that Davis wants Kiffin to quit. Why? One reason is that if Kiffin resigns, Davis doesn’t have to pay the remainder of his contract – which Davis would have to do if he fires him.

Welcome to the life of an NFL head coach, kid.

The Raiders were bad in 2007, though they weren’t quite as bad as they were in 2006, in which their badness qualified them for the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft. They were bad in 2005, and pretty bad in 2004. And they look to be bad again in 2008. In another generation, it meant something completely different to be “bad” when it came to the Raiders. In those days, the Raiders were bad – which meant that they were very good, in a Mae West sort of way.

January doesn’t belong to the Raiders, or the 49ers, or the Dolphins – not anymore. At least, not on the football field. Theirs is now the news of losers and desperados.

To which we say in Detroit, “Welcome to our world.”

Archie Manning Showed He’s A Dad Like Any Other

Archie Manning is the epitome of the phrase, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again — and if that doesn’t work, then make kids who can do it instead.”

OK, so I placed an addendum in there. Yet it’s true, even if it’s an axiom that, this morning, only seems to apply to the elder Manning and no one else.

I think just about every father in this country could relate to Manning as the Fox Sports cameras showed him squirming and agonizing in his suite while he watched son Eli try to lead the New York Giants into the Super Bowl. What parent (moms, too, of course) hasn’t reacted the same way as Archie Manning while their Timmy or Suzy plays their first clarinet solo, or is at bat in a Little League game, or utters a speech during the school play?

I’m not usually one for Fox’s sometimes incessant use of “cut away” shots during games, often times designed to manufacture suspense or drama that we can certainly create for ourselves. But in the case of the cut aways to Manning — the father — while yesterday’s NFC Championship game went on, all is forgiven, and even encouraged.

Patriarch Manning had a stilted career as an NFL quarterback, gamely fighting with some very bad New Orleans teams. He finished with Houston and Minnesota, and those squads weren’t any better. From 1971 to 1983, Manning was pummeled and his teams overmatched. He didn’t come close to the Super Bowl. His teams never even made the playoffs. Often they were mathematically eliminated around, say, Labor Day.

So imagine how gratified Archie Manning must feel now, seeing his two NFL-playing sons make the Big One in the last two seasons.

When Archie entered the NFL from Ole Miss, there weren’t any grand illusions. He was a good college QB that would be going to a bad NFL team. The Saints were in only their fifth season of existence, and were still in the throes of bad management and bad luck. Manning’s bosses did him a great disservice, never surrounding him with enough good players to be competitive in the NFL.

With son Peyton, there was more hope. The NFL had changed, and someone of Peyton’s size and skill was a perfect fit for the offenses in vogue. And the Colts weren’t the chopped liver that the 1970s and ’80s Saints were. Sure enough, after some near misses, Peyton and the Colts reached the mountain top.

With Eli, there was considerably more doubt, but again — not the hopelessness that went with his dad in New Orleans. There was the awkwardness after his selection by the Chargers — a team he openly said he wouldn’t play for. Then he was traded to the Giants, and many (like me) thought he was simply jumping from the frying pan into the fire, with New York’s propensity to gobble kids up and spit them out.

With Eli pointing the way, the Giants are again in a Super Bowl — their fourth

By the way, wouldn’t it have been something if Eli’s opponents in the Super Bowl were those same Chargers? That’s a media wet dream.

But despite those uncertainties, Eli showed enough — especially this season with all the road victories (perhaps lending more credence to the New York monolithic factor) — to indicate that he could soon follow older brother Peyton to the game with the Roman numerals. And now he’s done it, earlier than planned, I would say.

So back to dad.

Archie Manning was acting as any father would, watching his son perform. The stakes were high, and as the wise people say, you never know when you might get this chance again. So it was nice, actually, that Fox Sports gave us those reaction shots. I especially liked it when Archie would drop his head down to the table, as if he couldn’t bear to watch. He probably couldn’t.

The elder Manning had no opportunity in pro football to come anywhere near where his sons have already gone. And, being a dad, I’m sure he’d rather have it no other way.

The Lions Can’t Compete, And That’s The Biggest Indictment Of Them All

In all of professional sports, there are plenty of reasons why a franchise cannot get over the hump and have an opportunity to play for the whole enchilada. Bad luck. Injuries. Poor decisions. Free agent busts. A negative culture.

But there is an even greater indictment of an organization, and it can be said of the Detroit Lions today — as it could be said of them in too many of the past 50 years.

They cannot compete. And I can’t think of a worse, more damning statement to levy upon a professional sports team, but there you have it.

The Lions are woefully shy in talent, coaching, and above all, direction from the top.

None of what I’ve rapped onto this keyboard is news to you, I’m sure, but I just want to make sure folks don’t think that simply changing some parts here and there is going to get it done.

I’ve written it before, but it bears repeating. The Lions will not — repeat, NOT — make any headway until this infrastructure is torn apart, from top to bottom, and all of its key parts replaced.

The Lions need their Kenny Holland, their Dave Dambrowski, their Joe Dumars, in the worst way. I’ve mentioned Mike Holmgren, but that was before I knew that Bill Parcells was making himself available. That the Lions didn’t at least place a phone call to Parcells’s people is unconscionable. But that ship has sailed, and there are plenty of other good, solid football people that would die for a chance to right the Lions’ ship.

Coach Rod Marinelli, I’m afraid, must be sacrificed along with all the others. Talk right now is that offensive coordinator Mike Martz will be jettisoned. Fine. But not nearly enough. And what of the porous defense of coordinator Joe Barry, the coach’s son-in-law? That was far more damaging than the shenanigans Martz pulled — and he pulled plenty.

Marinelli, in my mind, is writing his own termination papers with the statements he makes. Every time the Lions lose — and when they lose, they lose BIG — he confesses to an abject failure in all areas of football: offense, defense, special teams, and worst of all, effort.

“It’s on me,” is his new favorite comment. It’s admirable that he wants to fall on the sword, but sooner or later the person admitting to all this derelict in duty must be shown the door.

Again, not enough. President Matt Millen, clearly, isn’t cutting it. If Bill Ford allows Millen to hire a fourth head coach in the face of such a hideous won/loss record, then that surely must be off the charts in terms of continued faith in a front office individual. Only the Los Angeles Clippers of the NBA, who have somehow kept Elgin Baylor employed for so long, could rival that.

I almost hate to write about the dismissal of Millen, because a) it doesn’t appear to be imminent; and b) how many more “Fire Millen” rants can you read or hear, anyway? But this opinion isn’t just about releasing Millen — it’s about what to do afterward.

I’ll say it again. Millen’s greatest failure happened in the wake of taking the Lions’ job to begin with. He didn’t surround himself with competent, experienced football people. He should NEVER have hired a rookie head coach — the “blind leading the blind” syndrome. A search committee should have been put together, and someone with NFL head coaching experience should have been brought in. OK, fine. That’s in the past. But here’s what to do going forward.

As I said, Bill Parcells isn’t the only human being who knows a thing or two about finding talent in the NFL. So stop crying over his hiring by the Miami Dolphins. That’s water under the bridge. Look instead in Indianapolis, or New England, or Seattle (Holmgren), or even Dallas. Maybe a few other places, where they’ve either enjoyed sustained success, or have demonstrated an ability to drag a franchise out of the muck. Look at what’s happening in Cleveland, for example.

Raid those front offices. Find someone who will lead the Lions in terms of drafting, acquiring pro personnel, and selecting a new head coach. That person should, in turn, delegate those responsibilities to proven NFL people, and oversee them.

Marinelli propped DT Cory Redding up as his pet project. Got him a boat load of money in the process. Marinelli’s pedigree is the defensive line. He supposedly had a huge hand in making the Tampa Bay defense so fearsome.

Yet here’s what he got from Redding this year: one sack. One.

Again, the coach is doing a great job — of writing his own epitaph. Another thing that’s “on him.”

It’s not enough to replace Rod Marinelli. Only a fool would think that that is the panacea.

A fool like …. Bill Ford Sr., perhaps?

Woody Demonstrates Lions’ Skewed View Of NFL Life

Lions guard-tackle Damien Woody summed up, perfectly, the misguided mindset of his team after yesterday’s 25-20 win over the Kansas City Chiefs.

“We haven’t won in a month and a half,” Woody said. “So it (win) came at a good time. Right around the holidays, so I feel good for everybody.”

NOW? NOW is a good time for this win?

What about in Arizona? Or at home against the Giants? Or in Minnesota? Or even when Dallas was in town?

All of those, I submit, would have been a better time for the Lions’ seventh win of 2007. Not yesterday, the Lions already mathematically and systematically eliminated from playoff contention.

But hey — it’s the holidays so it’s great to win.

And that, dear readers, is why the Lions won’t ever be successful — unless there’s a complete and total personality transplant.

You wouldn’t hear Rasheed Wallace — or any of his teammates — utter such a thing, about feeling good to win after a six-game losing streak crippled the team’s playoff chances. You couldn’t get such a quote from Nick Lidstrom, or Curtis Granderson. Nor from any other player who plays for any other sports franchise that has any sort of culture of winning in its blood.

I’m not dogging Damien Woody for feeling relief after winning for the first time since November 4. But to say that it comes “at a great time” is asking us to suspend disbelief yet again when it comes to the Lions.

Fitting, too, was the play of Shaun Rogers — who I definitely dogged yesterday. Fitting that he should burst out and leap from the side of a milk carton and into the fray, when the games are now meaningless. Did his solid play come at a “great time”, too?

No, there was nothing great, good, or even tolerable about the timing of win no. 7 this season. It should have come weeks ago, and if just one measly win had been forged since the 44-7 romp over the Denver Broncos, the Lions would probably have something to play for in Green Bay next Sunday other than a .500 record.

Actually, since the Lions never win in Green Bay, probably two victories since the Denver game would have been needed to maybe give the Honolulu Blue a cushion, allowing them to lose to the Packers and still be in the playoffs. But Lucky Seven didn’t come until the record was 6-8, and so there you have it.

I even wonder if we wouldn’t be talking about a Cal-like win by the Chiefs had their ball carrier not dove into the turf, inexplicably, at the Lions’ 30-yard line during the game’s final play. A couple more laterals and … who knows?

The Lions finished 5-3 at home. Whoop-de-do. They started 4-0 at Ford Field, so even their home record is a microcosm of the season at large.

I also know this: there are a whole bunch of chortling fans out there today — the ones who told us this would happen, even when the Lions sat pretty at 6-2. Sports talk radio was crawling with them.

“7-9! They need to prove more to me!”, was a typical call.

Those folks were right.

How about this gem from earlier this season, courtesy of receiver Mike Furrey.

“The Lions are 4-2! Y’all can kiss my ass!”

It was meant for the reporters, yelled in the locker room after the win over Tampa Bay.

OK, Mike. Ready?

The Lions are 7-8! You can plant one between my back pockets, too.

Give Big Baby His Rattle And Send Him Home (And Not Just Him)

The desperate pass landed square into the mammoth torso of Shaun Rogers, and the football stuck to him like Velcro. Off he went, rambling some 60 yards or so toward the Denver Broncos goal line, falling into the end zone, his 360 pounds (or more) crashing onto the turf. He was gassed, but he had scored. The crowd roared, and Ford Field was rocking with Rogers’ score putting an exclamation mark on an improbable 44-7 win.

That was November 4. And Rogers is still gassed, seven weeks later.

They call Rogers, the Lions’ defensive tackle, Big Baby. I’m not sure how he got that moniker, but there is something frightfully ironic about it. Somewhere in the barrel of goo that is him, there’s a joke to be made about that nickname. But the joke, I’m afraid, is on all of us. Has been for quite a while now.

Shaun Rogers was one of President Matt Millen’s rare competent draft picks, back in 2001. Ever since he entered the league, Rogers has, when he has cared to, been a dominant force along the line of scrimmage. He just hasn’t cared to all that much, or all that often. Now it seems evident that he simply can’t anymore, this season.

The Lions have not gone on this six-game losing skid because of Rogers, that’s for sure. But he hasn’t done them any favors, either. He reached the zenith of his season in that Broncos game, when he was that player that he could sometimes be – a beast inside, making tackles, disrupting plays.

In a fit of excitement, having been duped by Rogers in the Denver game, I served up some sugar about Big Baby the next day on the Internet, for all who cared to visit to lap up:

Shaun “Big Baby” Rogers is beginning to play the kind of defensive football that gets people into Pro Bowls unanimously and makes quarterbacks and offensive coordinators curl into the fetal position…
Watching the 350+ pound Rogers racing toward pay dirt, the football looking like an M&M in his hands, while the crowd swelled and a roar grew with each of his pounding strides, was a watershed moment, at least in the Matt Millen Era. Rogers was among the first players Millen drafted, in 2001, and here he was, a behemoth running like a DB toward the end zone. The Lions already had the game well in hand, but Rogers’ touchdown will be one talked about for years.

And as if all that blather wasn’t embarrassing enough, there was this line:

Big Baby could own Detroit.

What a fool I was!

Eight games is half a season. The Lions moved to 6-2 with their lopsided win over the Broncos, who were in disarray at the time. Another decent half, and the Lions would make the playoffs.
How could they not, with Big Baby shaking his rattle so?

Six losses later, the Lions’ season is over. The fact that the end has come in December as opposed to October, as in previous campaigns, is not cause for celebration.

Neither is the deterioration of Rogers’ overweight, woefully out of shape body.

Rogers, winded as usual; this may have been taken after the second play of the game for all we know

Every week, Rogers gets shuttled in and out of the lineup more and more often. It’s impossible not to figure out what’s going on. Big Baby needs another nap.

Coach Rod Marinelli tried like the dickens to ensure that this wouldn’t happen. He knew that, last season, Rogers was carrying too much girth. So in training camp, he allowed Rogers to work at his own pace, in his own way. Perhaps, the coach reasoned, this wide berth would keep Rogers fresher as the season wore on. Marinelli made the mistake of treating Big Baby like a grown man.

Oh, Rogers is grown, alright – fully grown, and then some. He’s a shameful excuse for a football player right now – stealing his paycheck while he can barely keep upright for more than three or four plays in a row. He peaked in his team’s eighth game, and has been as invisible as a 360-pound fraud can be, ever since.

“I’m in a slump,” was how Rogers recently and casually tried to explain away his disappearing act since the Denver game.

It’s more plausible that the fact that you can barely fit him into a piano box is what’s causing Rogers’s hideous play of late.

Yet the Lions, and even some of their fans, seem reluctant to bid farewell to Rogers. They chew on their fingernails, afraid that as soon as he’s out of Detroit, Shaun Rogers will become a consistent, useful force for another NFL team.

I’ll take my chances.

Truth? I don’t care if Rogers turns into the second coming of Deacon Jones, Reggie White, and Bruce Smith wrapped into one. I don’t care if he makes the Pro Bowl every year until he retires. He needs to go. Goodness gracious, accountability needs to start somewhere.

If that’s all that’s keeping him here – the fear that he could fulfill his potential elsewhere – then that’s not enough justification. What keeps a football player on your roster should be what he’s done – not what he could do for someone else.

The Lions are paying Rogers a lot of dough to gasp and wheeze on every other play. They may as well pay him some more to leave town entirely.

It’s not just Rogers, so you know. He’s only a symptom. It’s clear that the Lions need to start all over again – blowing this thing up. Nobody should be untouchable, save perhaps the rookie receiver Calvin Johnson. Millen, Marinelli, and everyone in between should be shown the door. It pains me to say that about the coach, because I truly believed that the Lions had found the right man when they hired Marinelli from Tampa Bay two years ago.

But every week, Marinelli falls on the sword, taking the blame for his team’s lack of readiness to play that Sunday’s game. “It’s on me,” is his new favorite line in describing the latest massacre played out on the football field.

Then if it’s always on you, coach, I suppose you should be replaced.

Get rid of them all, I say.

Bill Parcells was just hired by the Miami Dolphins as an executive. It was reported that the Atlanta Falcons had tried to hire him, too, but the Dolphins got the nod. The Dolphins are 1-13. Yet Parcells saw something in Miami.

The Lions didn’t place a telephone call, despite presumably knowing that the well-regarded Parcells was shopping his services. There are those who say that Parcells could have been had, if the Lions had cared to get involved. They are 30-80 in the Matt Millen Era.

They deserve Shaun Rogers, come to think of it.

Lions Need To Start All Over (Maybe With Holmgren?)

First, let me thank DirecTV. They tried to spare me.

For almost an hour after kickoff of yesterday’s Lions-Chargers game, DirecTV lost their over-the-air channels, probably due to the bad weather. These included Fox 2, which was showing the Lions. Even my fancy-shmancy NFL Sunday Ticket couldn’t help me, because it blacks out games scheduled to air on local channels.

So when the game finally appeared after the technical glitch, the Fox Bar scoreboard along the top of the screen told me that I hadn’t missed much — unless you count 17 Charger points as something worth seeing. So I watched a few minutes, and called it a day.

But today’s post isn’t about yesterday’s game. What is there, really, to say? The Lions are tanking, freefalling like a lead balloon. So best to talk about the future, and to do that it’s necessary to analyze the pasts of the other three, more successful teams in town.

I was thinking about this last evening. Why have the Tigers, Red Wings, and Pistons been able to find success? How have they done it?

Red Wings. They may not live up to the hype every spring, but for about 15 years now, you’ve been able to look at the Red Wings as legitimate Stanley Cup contenders as every playoff has begun — sometimes they’ve been the odds-on favorite. Think about that for a moment. Fifteen straight seasons of being considered a possible champion every April. No team in any other sport can say such a thing — not for 15 straight years, anyway.

How have they done it?

Drafting, scouting, free agency, trades. These are the elements of any personnel department. And the Red Wings have excelled in every area at various times in the ’90s and ’00s. Have they made some mistakes? Sure. But few of them. Their work in Europe and Sweden has been exemplary. It sounds simple, but one of the reasons the Red Wings have been so good is because they’ve had some pretty damn good players come through Detroit. And those players were an amalgam of drafts, trades (especially those deadline deals), and free agency — almost in equal distribution. Amazing.

Coaching. This happened in stages. Jacques Demers took the team to a certain level. Bryan Murray nudged them forward a bit more — at least in terms of regular season success. Then, finally, Scotty Bowman was brought in to finish things off. Then, after two disappointing playoffs, Dave Lewis was let go and enter Mike Babcock. Today, the Red Wings are again the elite of the league.

Pistons. A bold, sometimes brazen mindset in Auburn Hills, led by President Joe Dumars, has spelled the rise of the Pistons to elite status.

Personnel moves. The Rasheed Wallace trade was one many GMs would have been afraid to make. Not being afraid to admit mistakes and trade bad draft picks like Mateen Cleaves and Rodney White. Letting Ben Wallace flee (wisely). Constantly tweaking the supporting cast. Taking a flyer on Chris Webber. Finding gems like Tayshaun Prince and, it appears, Jason Maxiell. Blending youth in with experience (Rodney Stuckey, Arron Afflalo, Amir Johnson). Basically, being just restless enough in this area — and never truly being satisfied.

Coaching. Firing Rick Carlisle (after two 50-win seasons) and bringing in Larry Brown was bold. So was letting Brown go, despite two straight trips to the Finals. Hiring playoff-challenged Flip Saunders wasn’t without its risks. Yet the Pistons have managed to make five straight trips to the Conference Finals. Not too shabby.

Tigers. As with the Red Wings and Pistons, boldness and a commitment of money by ownership has turned the Tigers into a powerhouse ballclub.

Personnel. Getting Pudge Rodriguez, Rondell White, and Fernando Vina to sign here after a 119-loss season was off the charts. Though White and Vina were hardly All-Stars in Detroit, their signings nonetheless made the Tigers relevant again. If nothing else, those guys, plus the acquisition of Carlos Guillen later on, put some bona fide big leaguers on the roster once again.

Since then, the team has fleeced others for Placido Polanco, Gary Sheffield, and Edgar Renteria, and of course the blockbuster trade with the Marlins a couple weeks ago was another feather in the Tigers’ baseball caps. Jeremy Bonderman and Nate Robertson were throw-ins from other trades, believe it or not. Marcus Thames was stolen. For every Neifi Perez trade, there’ve been many more good ones.

Scouting has brought Curtis Granderson, Justin Verlander, Brandon Inge, and new potential ace Rick Porcello. And it has helped the Tigers stockpile bargaining chips to use in the aforementioned trades.

Free agency has been used mostly wisely. Vina was a bust (due to injuries), and so was Troy Percival (for the same reason). But other signings have yielded Kenny Rogers, Magglio Ordonez,
and Rodriguez.

Coaching/managing. Do the Tigers go to the World Series in 2006 with any other manager than Jim Leyland? I wouldn’t wager on it.

How far the Tigers have come in four years is unreal. Basically, since 2003 they’ve gone from national embarrassment to possibly the best team in baseball. They reached the Series three years after the 119-loss campaign.

OK, so what is the common denominator here?

The One.

Meaning?

The One is the person who’s presided over all these successful machinations. The Red Wings’ resurgence started with owner Mike Ilitch’s very first hire: former Islanders super scout Jimmy Devellano. Jimmy D. had a rough first few years as he found his footing, but then he hired Demers, and the franchise was reborn. Devellano was also the driving force behind the team hiring Bowman in 1993. A steady, efficient front office was started with Devellano’s hiring, and has led to unheard-of stability. The trio of Ilitch, Devellano, and current GM Ken Holland have been together forever, it seems. Bowman’s stint as coach/GM was wildly successful, and the passing of the torch to Holland, promoted after the 1997 Cup, was seamless.

So right now Holland is The One for the Red Wings, but he was set up for success by the work of Jimmy D. and Bowman, who were each The One in their own time.

The Pistons have Joe Dumars as The One. The team was treading water when Dumars stepped out of his basketball sneakers and into the wing-tipped shoes of an executive, back in 2000. Dumars then began acting as if he was born to be a GM. It was spooky, how good he was right out of the gate. Reminded me of Jerry West, but even West served as coach for a few years before rising to GM status. Dumars is almost making more noise as a GM than he did as a player — and this is a Hall of Famer and FInals MVP we’re talking about here.

The Tigers were going absolutely nowhere until they hired Dave Dombrowski in November 2001. After a rough start (mainly because of what he inherited) that included the 43-119 bottoming out, DD has been King Midas.

Dombrowski is clearly The One for the Tigers. I shudder to think where the franchise would be if Ilitch followed up the Randy Smith Era with another bad GM hire.

The Lions. I’m not trying to be funny or a smart ass here, but the Lions have possessed NONE of the stuff I’ve talked about here that breeds success in professional sports. No boldness, no guts. Wanna know the difference between boldness and foolishness?

Hiring Scotty Bowman was bold. Making Joe Dumars a GM so soon after his playing days was bold. Luring Dombrowski from Florida and giving him complete control was bold. Hiring Leyland to manage after seven years away from it was bold.

But being bold means taking calculated risks. It doesn’t mean just doing something out of the box for kicks.

Hiring Matt Millen from the broadcast booth wasn’t bold. It was foolish. There was nothing calculated or researched about it. The only thing that would have made it bold was if Millen was brought in with the mandate to immediately surround himself with sound, solid football people. If he was ordered to form a coaching search committee consisting of such minds. Then maybe it’s a bold move. Instead it was just plain misguided. It created excitement for a while, but that doesn’t have long shelf life if the clothes have no emperor.

Personnel? HA! Poor drafts, questionable (at best) free agent signings, and curious trades have made the Lions the antithesis of their three sports neighbors in Detroit.

Coaching? Bad hires here, of course. But the Tigers (Luis Pujols, Phil Garner), Red Wings (Harry Neale, Brad Park), and Pistons (Alvin Gentry, George Irvine) have all had their warts in this department, too. But they were able to learn from those mistakes. The Lions have been making strange coaching hires since 1974. And as much as I want to like Rod Marinelli, this current six-game slide/surrender has made me wonder about him, too.

Lack of The One. The Lions have never, EVER, come close to employing The One. I hate to say it, but you really have to go all the way back to Nick Kerbaway, GM of the 1950s, to find The One. Russ Thomas lasted way longer than Matt Millen has, but his decades of tenure produced nothing. Since Thomas, the Lions have been managed by Chuck Schmidt (please), Jerry Vainisi (he was never given a real chance), and now Millen. Ugh.

You win in any sport with good players, I understand that. But someone has to procure these players, no?

So here’s the deal: the Lions will never mimic the rise of the Pistons, Red Wings, and Tigers (all of whom were in the depths of their sports at one time or another) unless they do one of two things — have a change in ownership, or a change in paradigm. Since the former is unlikely, then let’s look at the latter.

The Lions need to find The One. Somewhere out there in the NFL, such a person exists. I believe that. Is he a former player? Unlikely, especially if we’re talking recent former player. It’s asking a lot to expect a recently-retired player to become a successful NFL GM. Dumars did it, but the NBA is different than the NFL. Far fewer players, for one.

Is he a former GM? Well, maybe, but hopefully not one who’s been out of the league too long.

Most likely, The One is employed by another NFL team currently, possibly as an assistant GM or in a similar position in the personnel department. What I would do is look at perennially successful teams like the Patriots, Seahawks, Colts, and maybe even the Cowboys and raid their front office for their bright, young executives.

I don’t know as many front office types in the NFL as I do in other sports, so I don’t have a lot of actual names to throw around here. So in lieu of that, I mention traits and backgrounds.

But if you want a name, here’s one: Mike Holmgren.

If you can get him out of his contract in Seattle, maybe Holmgren would come here as a GM-only guy. If he feels he has the coaching bug out of his system, that is. He’s still young enough, he clearly has been around winning organizations, and he’s made sound personnel moves in his career. Just a thought.

Matt Millen obviously isn’t The One. And the Lions will continue to wallow until they find that person. Because it all begins there — as the other teams in town have illustrated.