A quick note before I get started - I was planning on combining a relatively short special teams review with the coaches and team management/ownership, but, well, the coaches and management/ownership section is going to end up being a horrible hellbeast and really needs to be its own thing, so that will be saved for the next post. A quick preview though: COLORFUL EPITHETS WILL BE UTTERED~
Anyway, on to the special teams, which, for years and years has actually been a fairly consistent source of decency if not excellence for the Lions, a tiny oasis in the desert of hellfire that is Ford Field/The Pontiac Silverdome. During the length of my fandom, I think the Lions have only had two kickers, Eddie Murray and Jason Hanson, which is pretty absurd and outright comical when you consider the position turnover everywhere else. Worrying about the kickers is basically a non-issue every year. Meanwhile the punters are always at least solid if not spectacular, while the return game has in the past been a source of pride, with Mel Gray and Eddie Drummond counted as among the best in the league. All in all, things have been good.
That said, I was concerned coming into this year. I figured that this was the year that Jason Hanson would finally realize he was 156 years old and that, combined with the weight of being a Detroit Lion would finally cause him to collapse in an exhausted heap on the field, sobbing, unable to even make a 30 yard field goal. Either that, or cause him to run naked through the streets of Detroit, hurling abuse at a city which had devoured his once promising soul. Thankfully, I was wrong.
Instead, Hanson went out and had one of the best - if not the best - years of his career. He was 21/22 on field goals, including an incredible 8/8 from more than 50 yards, which I believe is an NFL record, and along the way he set the all time record for most field goals from beyond 50 yards in a career. And the one field goal that he missed was actually blocked. He was 14/14 from beyond 40 yards, and in a season in which everything that can go wrong did go wrong, Hanson decided that he would be the very best of the best. It was almost heartbreaking to see a guy who had toiled for so long for a team that was perpetually putrid put it all out there in the twilight of his career while everything else crumbled to dust around him. When the season was over, we couldn't even appropriately appreciate how good Hanson was because, let's face it, 0-16 covers up a whole hell of a lot.
And 0-16 is probably the reason why Hanson was kept home from the Pro Bowl. If anyone deserved to go to Honolulu from this gang of shitheads and simps it was Hanson. Perhaps it would be small comfort for a man who has spent his whole career with the Lions, who has watched the team lose and lose and lose and had to do nothing but just stand there and take it and do his job year in and year out. Perhaps. But perhaps it would have offered just a little solace, a little recognition for the one player who in all that time has always been there, always done his job and done it well. I know he's just a kicker and everyone laughs at that shit, but damn it all, he's the only thing we've had to be proud of in a long time as Lions fans and the more I think about it the more I'm pissed that he wasn't chosen for the Pro Bowl.
Nick Harris is an okay punter, a solid, pretty dependable type who can be a force indoors, which is good because, last time I checked, the Lions played at least half their games with a roof over their head. For his career, Harris has averaged 42.1 yards per punt. But the first half of his career was spent as a middling sort of punter with the Bengals and the Lions before he broke through. Those first few years he was about a 40 yard per punt kind of player. Since then, his averages have been 43.5, 45.0, 44.3, and 43.9. Pretty damn good. The 43.9 yards per punt he put up in the Year that God Forgot isn't bad, but the truth is that unless you are an all world punter or a horrible punter, the surest sign that you are doing your job is that your are relatively unnoticeable. Just go out, slam it 45 yards or so, try to stick the ball inside the 20 when you can and no one will chew your ass out. So, it's probably no surprise that the one punt I really remember from this season just happened to be the embarrassing shank he had against Tennessee. Of course, seeing as how this is the Detroit Lions we are talking about, that happened on Thanksgiving, the one week, the one game, where everyone is watching the Lions. Good job Nick.
I alluded to being concerned about the special teams before the season began. There were three things I was kind of worried about, Hanson's advancing age and beat down soul being the first. The second was the one that I was probably the most worried about, and that was the Lions return game, which, suddenly, after years of having been top notch, suddenly found itself as nonexistent, made up of spare parts and retreads. Nobody personified this more than Aveion Cason, a running back who has been cut and resigned so many times that it feels kind of like a joke. Unfortunately, the punchline to that joke is Cason and he's our primary return guy, and . . . well, that's a problem.
Cason is perfectly dependable, if what you're depending on is a slightly below average return game. The Lions tried to replace him with Brandon Middleton for a chunk of the year only to find that Middleton wasn't really any good either. Middleton averaged 22.2 yards per return while Cason averaged 23.3. Neither is really all that good, and on a team as bad as the Lions, you can't really get away with pedestrian efforts out of your return guys when the rest of the team sucks 112 different varieties of dick.
As mediocre as the kick return game was, at least there was a semblance of consistency back there. When it came to returning punts, the Lions strategy seemed to be to throw whoever was available back there and hope the guy didn't get killed. The guy who returned the most punts on the year was Shaun McDonald, and he only returned 11 of them, and for a so what average of 9.5 yards per return. Again, on a team so incapable of consistent ball movement as the Lions, any boost in field position was an absolute necessity if they were going to stave off the horror show that occurred. But, of course, they didn't get it, because, well, why the fuck would they? This is the Lions after all.
Meanwhile, the third thing that I was concerned about was kick coverage, which has seemingly deteriorated year after year. Part of this is probably because the Lions special teams aces are too busy competing for starting jobs elsewhere, which, well, I don't remember Steve Tasker starting for the Bills, do you? And this past season was really no different, but my memory banks have already started to wipe themselves clean of the atrocities of the past year and there aren't a whole lot of stats to quantify this. I do have the distinct memory of these guys being largely inadequate though, but this is one of those places where I'm just going to say I might be right, I might be wrong, feel free to correct me or call me a jackass or a dipshit or whatever you want.
What We Learned: That Jason Hanson has robot parts in his legs, keeping him in prime kicking condition well into his 70's. We also learned that Nick Harris is who we thought he is, and that the kick return game is pretty much nonexistent. We also learned that I might be a jackass or a dipshit or whatever.
What We Can Expect: Well, hopefully, Hanson's bionic leg keeps going strong for at least another year or two and that Harris can be Harris. I would like for the Lions to draft either a receiver or a cornerback somewhere in the middle rounds who is also a dynamite return man, someone who can step in right away for Cason and company. We already signed Eric King, a backup corner who is a good special teams player, and hopefully we can add some small pieces and parts, wild eyed assholes who just like to run down the field and wreck motherfuckers. That is the dream anyway. Overall, I think we can expect this to be a fairly solid area for the Lions - in the kicking game anyway - and if they find a return man I'll be happy. If not, well, mediocrity will be the order of the day, which sucks, because we need anything - FOR THE LOVE OF GOD ANYTHING - to be proud of as Lions fans.
What I Said Before the Season: Grade: B, which is better than every other position than one and that's just fucking sad. But this grade could drop as low as a C or even a C- if Hanson finally gets too old, and there are signs that he may be near the end. But Harris should still be reliable but unspectacular which kind of sums up this unit as a whole this season.
Final Grade: B-. That may be a little generous. Okay, C+ and that still might be pushing it, but Jason Hanson deserves some love. Harris was okay - embarrassing national TV disasters aside. But the rest of this unit was pretty sorry. If Hanson wasn't around, chances are I would be ranting and raving like a loon just like I have about every other position group, but Hanson is my guy. Okay, you know what? I am just gonna separate this and give Hanson an A+ and give everyone else a D+. There, fuck it.
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