Ahhh, don’t you love the 20/20 view of hindsight? With so many Detroit Lions fans having their panties in a bunch(my Lion-print panties included) over the Lions current draft selections, I began reminiscing to the past years when the Lions drafts were praised and graded as an A almost across the board by fans and media.

Those were the good old days, it seemed that with each Matt Millen draft pick the excitement level would rise, along with my hopes and dreams.

How did you feel about Matt Millen drafting our savior and future Hall-of-Fame QB Joey “Heisman” Harrington? Weren’t you geeked up to get that blazing fast wide receiver named Charles Rogers out of our own backyard? He was going to be great alongside Roy Williams. Who could defend that offense? Remember?

Who wasn’t excited about the “track team” we were putting together when Millen and the Lions drafted the speedy Boss Bailey in the 2nd round of that same draft? Speed kills had become the mantra in the D! Woo hooo!

Let’s not forget about Kalimba Edwards (known as Kalimbust Edwards in my circle of friends), Mike Williams, and 2nd round “steal” Teddy Lehman!

Most of us were sooooooo excited at these draft selections, Mel Kiper and the other talking heads patted their buddy Millen on the back until they left bruises on the guy, Millen was the draft day guru!

But then the players had to actually play. WHOMP WHOMP…. Continue reading “Matt Millen’s Draft Picks More Celebrated Than Martin Mayhew’s – Detroit Lions” »

Nobody is perfect. That should be understood by each and everyone of us who is currently breathing, but perfection is not needed in order to be exceptional. In professional sports, players, coaches, team executives and team owners are judged by wins vs losses and really nothing else.

Then there are extraordinary circumstances. When the team you take over has just endured the weapon of Mass Ineptitude named Matt Millen and just posted a historically horrible 0-16 record it’s pretty easy to assume that you have a bigger task at hand than most GMs on the first day of work. But fortunately for the bruised and mentally beaten Detroit Lions fan Martin Mayhew was and is up to the task in a major way.

Martin Mayhew was promoted to general manager December 29th, 2008 after the wildly celebrated firing of “All Talk” Matt Millen and reports directly to Mr. Ford on all football matters.

I’ve sifted through Martin Mayhew’s transactions since he took over the team and picked out some of the highlights. I’ve left out some of the more obvious moves like drafting stars Matthew Stafford and Ndamukong Suh in the top of the first round, even though he clearly still deserves credit for not screwing up top draft picks.

If you think not, let me remind you of Joey Harrington, Charles “puff,puff,pass” Rogers and Roy “first doooooown by 30 points” Williams. Even selecting at the very top doesn’t guarantee a marquee player, you must choose wisely.

There were literally hundreds upon hundreds of moves and transactions that I sifted through, you may remember something that I missed but here are a few highlights that took us from league laughingstock to league upper echelon in 3 short years after a DECADE of sheer misery. Some moves have helped long-term and some were the best that could be done at the time and definitely helped.

Here are your Martin Mayhew moves of note:
Continue reading “The Brilliance Of Martin Mayhew: GM Moves That Made a Difference For The Detroit Lions” »

It’s not the end of the world, but unfortunately for the Detroit Lions and Lions fans, the team is amongst the 5 NFL teams with the lowest available amount of salary cap space. After the new labor agreement NFL teams are now able to carry over their excess salary cap space from one year over to the next, that really doesn’t do our Detroit Lions very much good but here’s a look at every NFL team’s remaining 2011 cap space, as of today, February 12, 2012.

 

NFL TEAMS BY NAME & SALARY CAP SPACE AVAILABLE:

Jacksonville Jaguars:  $31.66 million.

Denver Broncos:  $27.88 million.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers:  $25.05 million.

Kansas City Chiefs:  $24.01 million.

Seattle Seahawks:  $21.27 million.

Buffalo Bills:  $19.29 million.

Cincinnatti Bengals:  $17.59 million.

Dallas Cowboys:  $17.14 million.

San Francisco 49ers:  $16.87 million.

Washington Redskins:  $13.6 million.

Philadelphia Eagles:  $11.01 million.

Miami Dolphins:  $9.05 million.

Cleveland Browns:  $8.98 million.

New York Jets:  $8.39 million.

Tennessee Titans:  $8.11 million.

Chicago (garbage) Bears:  $7.74 million.

Arizona Cardinals:  $7.04 million.

New England Patriots:  $6.66 million.

Baltimore Ravens:  $6.18 million.

Green Bay Fudge Packers:  $5.48 million.

New Orleans Saints:  $4.22 million.

St.Louis Rams:  $3.5 million.

Oakland Raiders:  $3.23 million.

Carolina Panthers:  $2.8 million.

Indianapolis Colts:  $2.5 million.

San Diego Chargers:  $2.1 million.

Minnesota Vikings(Viqueens):  $1.95 million.

Detroit Lions:  $1.47 million.

 
Houston Texans:  $1.08 million.

New York(worst Super Bowl Champs ever) Giants:  $1.06 million.

Atlanta Falcons:  $747,000.

Pittsburgh Steelers:  $506,000.

 

Look on the bright side Lions fans, we have very little salary cap space left in Detroit because we have great players, look at the top 5 teams WITH money to spend and you see a bunch of bad teams except for the Denver Tebows, oops, I mean Broncos.

You have to pay for talent and we have load of it bursting from the seams. Also remember that there will likely be contracts restructured, player cuts and even trades that can change the Detroit Lions cap situation for the better. GO LIONS!!!

 

LIONS LINKS - In this round up of Lions links & articles we have an interesting interview of Detroit Lions president Tom Lewand by Bill Simonson of The Huge Show.

There are many very interesting statements made in the 20 minute interview that touched on issues like the media’s reaction to Ndamukong Suh and the “stomp” incident in which he says “I’m an Ndamukong Suh fan, on and off the field” and he also points out the lack of attention to the stomp that Kevin Love had in the NBA and the lack of public outcry in comparison to Suh’s incident.

Also speaking on the lack of Pro Bowl recognition and different accolades that his team may have been neglected for, he defiantly exclaims “I really don’t care” and explains that those things don’t mean anything to him and they are really just “popularity contests”, he sounded a bit rebellious and very sincere in his feelings on the matter. I liked his tone a lot.

Mr.Lewand was also asked about free agency on-goings with current players and negotiations with Calvin Johnson and he gave some interesting answers, in regards to Calvin Johnson for this upcoming year, the Detroit Lions president says “he’s not going anywhere” and in regards to Calvin Johnson’s feeling about the team and re-signing, he says about Calvin “he’s expressed an interest in staying”. That made me do a little dance.

I really enjoyed the interview, Mr.Lewand was very candid and honest.

The Lions president has a noticeably confident sound in his voice and as a Lions fan I feel like the team that I love so much is in good CARING hands with Tom Lewand and GM Martin Mayhew, listen to the interview for yourself.

 

More Lions Links

Rounding out the rest of the cool articles about our Grid Iron Gladiator, I enjoyed and/or found these interesting today…

*Dave Birkett of The Detroit Free Press writes about Matthew Stafford’s skyrocketing popularity in which the Lions quarterback gives some encouraging quotes that show he really is more about football than being in the limelight and on the media front stage.

 *Kevin Seifert of ESPN give his Best and Worst of the NFC North where he awarded the best and worst coaches, front office execs, players and offseason moves in this competitive division, as a Lions fan I found his list more than satisfactory and besides that, any article that talks about Roy Williams sucking is already good in my book! Check it out.

 *Anwar Richardson of Mlive wrote about Kevin Smith’s desire to be re-signed with the Detroit Lions, man, I wish Kevin could stay healthy I think the guy has talent but we will see what the Lions decide. I’m interested to hear what you guys think about Kevin Smith potentially being brought back to the D for another shot.

* And lastly, Forbes chimes in about how “the stomp” has made Ndamukong Suh one of the top 10 most disliked athletes in America, do you think he deserves that?

I don’t know if he deserves that or not, but I can’t say that I’m surprised, I wrote about Suh’s actions a few days ago. Suh is a VERY smart young guy, I think he will learn from the backlash and grow from it. He went from one of the MOST likable athletes last year to one of the least likeable athletes this year, I think he’s smart enough to bounce back.

I’d love to see what you have to say about these articles and the Tom Lewand interview in the comment section!