As bad as the offense was, and I think we established that it fell somewhere between bad and having a woodpecker strapped to your dick for five straight months, the defense was much worse. Oh Lord was it ever worse. There are times when you know things are going to be bad, like I did before the season, but nothing can quite prepare you for the horror show that was the Detroit Lions defense in the Year that God Forgot.
There were times during the season when I honestly thought the Lions had both the worst run defense I had ever seen and the worst pass defense. I mean, that is just extraordinary to be able to fail so completely that not a single part of your squad is even remotely working. It was an epic failure, the kind that they later write books about. A hundred years from now kids will be studying what happened in an attempt to discover why it is that a group of men could suffer so completely. Rod Marinelli and Joe Barry will be treated like NAZIS by a disgusted populace horrified by the war crimes they have committed.
I mean, JESUS, this was a bad team in all areas, but the defense, well, I'll do my best to figure this mess out without rampaging through the streets like a werewolf on PCP. As I remember what happened and relive the nightmare of 0-16 I will probably get the shakes so bear with me, this is going to be ugly and miserable as fuck.
We'll start with the defensive line, where following an inconsistent 2007 season the team(read: Rod Marinelli)decided that it would be best if Shaun Rogers took his stripper loving ways out of town. Poor Shaun didn't fit the lunch pail mentality that Marinelli craved and with a bit of power over the personnel decisions after guiding the team to a dazzling 7-9 record, Marinelli decided that talent was a mere trifle, and that from now on his team would be made up of buffoons who were "coachable", which is one of those ambiguously defined clichés that often ends up resulting in disaster. So, sorry Big Shaun, time to go. There are still a lot of Lions fans who feel like Rogers needed to leave because he was lazy, he was unmotivated and he wasn't "coachable". He was also the only dude the Lions had on the defensive line who was capable of making plays, and when you are a team like the Lions, the difference between mediocrity and OH GOD HEAD FOR THE HILLS ONLY THE STRONG WILL SURVIVE is precarious at best. The hubris needed to think that the team wouldn't suffer without Shaun Rogers in the middle is ridiculous. It's not like there was a conga line of available talent ready to take over. This isn't USC for fuck's sake.
Of course, now that the malcontent Rogers was safely out of the way the team could get down to business. Unfortunately, the Lions defense seemed to be in the business of making dog shit sandwiches on a weekly basis, and the defensive line had a major hand in making those disgusting sandwiches. It all started the first week of the season when Michael Turner looked like Emmitt Smith, O.J. Simpson and Jesus combined on the way to over 200 yards rushing. Sadly, I was not surprised, as before the season I called for the Lions run defense to be porous at best, apocalyptic at worst, and unfortunately I wasn't wrong. The Lions simply had no one up the middle beyond a couple of journeymen career backups and a wildly overpaid player who had parlayed about half a season's worth of outstanding play into a mega-contract. To expect anything more than what happened was foolish.
And that game was only a harbinger of things to come, most notably against the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Tennessee Titans on Thanksgiving, games which made me wonder if the Lions defense had decided to protest some indignity by collectively shitting their pants for the whole world to see.
Meanwhile, the Lions pass rush, the key to the Tampa 2 defense which I grew to despise - perhaps unfairly, but shit, that's what 0-16 will do to you - was way too inconsistent, and left the team vulnerable to any quarterback with a pulse. The Lions were lit up by just about everyone on their schedule. If Aaron Rodgers played the Lions every week he probably would have thrown for like 6,000 yards and would have been given the first born daughter and a dairy cow by every family in Wisconsin. I will ignore the obvious daughter/dairy cow joke here and move on. The simple fact is this: no matter what the Lions did, no matter who they played, the defensive line failed and most of the time, it failed spectacularly.
Let's start with Cory Redding, he of the monster contract, earned because he moved over from defensive end and started dropping fools left and right in a little more than half a season. You would think a team would want to see a guy replicate that over, you know, at least one full season, but no, the Lions are no ordinary franchise and so they gave Cory Redding a contract which I'm pretty sure includes the rights to Matt Millen's soul. Of course, Redding went out and had a mediocre 2007 and then when 2008 rolled around and Shaun Rogers wasn't there to command any double teams, we all found out that Cory Redding is what he is: an ordinary player who by no means deserves to be paid like he is the second coming of Vlad the Impaler. In 2006, the year that got him that contract, Redding had 8 sacks. The last two years COMBINED he has had 4 sacks. 4 sacks. 4. SOUNDS LIKE AN ALL PRO TO ME.
Of course, we could afford to have Redding under-perform because we had such luminaries as Chuck Darby and Langston Moore ready to line up next to him. Excuse me while I position this shotgun in my mouth so I can still see the screen while I type. I mean, come on. You get rid of Shaun Rogers for Chuck Darby? I know, Shaun was lazy. Shaun was also a Pro Bowl caliber defensive tackle and the only way Darby would ever even get near the Pro Bowl was if he stood outside the stadium with a pair of binoculars and wept before security ran him off.
But he's a high motor guy! A real high quality individual! He's coachable! Who gives a fuck? You can either play or you can't and if you can't, have fun working as a stock broker or a gym teacher or as the town drunk. I don't care. Win or go home. Perhaps this is just me. I was raised on the Pistons Bad Boys teams and I love the 70's Oakland Raiders the 80's Miami Hurricanes and a bunch of other teams that everybody hates. Those are the teams that got it right. They won and didn't worry about all the other bullshit, and that's what someone like Chuck Darby represents to me - all that other bullshit. It's not fair to him, but that's what he meant as a player to me. He represented all the misguided coachable, good man, hard work, clichéd bullshit that constantly swirled around Rod Marinelli and the Detroit Lions this past season.
Darby and Langston Moore and Landon Cohen and whoever else you want to throw in there are all guys who could probably be decent backups in the NFL. But when you're counting on them to serve as the rotation at defensive tackle, well, what happened to the Lions in 2008 is going to happen to you. It's not like there's some grand mystery here. Those guys aren't good enough and everyone knew it coming into the season, and the blame goes directly on the hubris of Rod Marinelli.
The defensive end positions for the Lions are in a little better shape than the putrid mess in the middle. Coming into the season, the Lions were set on the right side of the line with Dewayne White, the one Tampa Bay expatriate who seemed like he could be an impact player. When he played, the Lions were a better team. When he was injured, and didn't play, the Lions were worse. It's that simple, and it was like that for the past two seasons. Last year, White had 6.5 sacks in 14 games. Not great or anything, but better than anything else the Lions could put out there. White gave the Lions a potential impact player who made plays both against the pass and the run. I'm okay with him being the guy there. The Lions can win with him.
On the other side, things were dicey heading into the season. I mean, who would the Lions go with? There was the raw as hell Ikaika Alama-Francis, who everyone thinks has all the talent in the world but was nowhere near ready to contribute on a meaningful level. There was Corey Smith, a player who had flashed some pass rush ability but was pretty one dimensional, best suited to passing downs. There was Jared Devries, a veteran who was long on heart but short on talent. And then there was Cliff Avril, a rookie third round pick out of Purdue. And in the beginning of the season the answer appeared to be . . . nobody. But as the season went on, one player began to emerge. Cliff Avril showed that, with a little seasoning, he could be a dynamite pass rusher. There were times when he looked like the single best player on this woeful defense and gave me hope for the future. Unfortunately, Avril wasn't quite ready or consistent enough to be an every down force that the Lions needed to be able to effectively run their defense and with that fragility, combined with Dewayne White's inability to stay healthy on the other side of the line, the Lions were doomed to failure.
What We Learned: Well, we learned that this team can't stop the run or the pass. Not even a little. And we learned that the loss of Shaun Rogers was much bigger than a lot of people, specifically the coaches, wanted to admit. Without him, the Lions had no one up front capable of making plays. We learned that the ends are talented, but either injury prone or young and raw. Add it all up and you get a defense capable of going 0-16.
What We Can Expect: Here's where it gets interesting. With the coaching change, the Lions will be changing defensive philosophy, and with Gunther Cunningham as defensive coordinator, with the blessing of new head coach Jim Schwartz, it looks like the Lions will attack, attack, attack, which is welcome news as far as I'm concerned. How they will do this remains to be seen. If they employ a standard 4-3, then expect a similar lineup to trot out onto the field next season, plus hopefully a decent addition in the middle, either from the draft or from free agency. This is one position that the Lions absolutely cannot afford to leave unattended. If - and I recognize it's a big if - the Lions finally fill the hole left by Shaun Rogers, they will have a front four of New Guy and Cory Redding flanked by White and a rapidly emerging Cliff Avril, along with Alama-Francis and Corey Smith, which would be a big improvement over the atrocities and war crimes committed by this line in 2008. An attacking style using those ends, with hopefully a big run stuffer up the middle, could potentially produce a line that dare I say it, might even be good. But, the Lions could also shift to a 3-4, in which case they have to find someone to fill the nose tackle spot because that dude ain't on the roster. Redding could conceivably(and very probably would)move to defensive end in this alignment, but beyond that things get tricky. White might not have a place in the 3-4, while Avril would be fine as an outside backer(think Lamarr Woodley)in this setup. But who mans the other end spot? I just don't know. Regardless, I think things should improve here. To be honest, they almost have to, but if things break the right way for the Lions, this could actually be an area that holds its own, a far cry from the hell we all know and wish we didn't remember from this past season. Of course, seeing as how this is the Detroit Lions we're talking about, the team will probably draft a complete bust, White will be found missing both legs sometime in July and Avril will decide to devote himself to the teachings of the Hare Krishna, and will spend next season handing out pamphlets at airports and the Lions will be overrun once again by everyone they face.
What I Said Before the Season: Grade: D+ if everything works out as I expect it to, C- if someone, maybe Francis, turns into a pass rushing threat, and D- if last year was a fluke for White and Redding continues to be mediocre
OVERALL FINAL GRADE: F. The line was a complete disaster for the Lions, and is one of the chief culprits in 0-16. F for fuck this bullshit.
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