The shit train rolls on, and we make our next stop in 2004. By this time, any pretense of respectability or even mediocrity had been murdered and buried, dug up again, had its corpse desecrated, set on fire and shot into space. In short, the Lions were a fucking disaster and no one had any hope that this team was going to be anything but ass ugly as long as Matt Millen was still skulking around Ford Field like some horrible Grendelish beast, eating our hopes and dreams in his cave or office or wherever the hell it was he slithered off to when the sun went down.
And, with all of that happiness in the air, Lions fans wondered if the 2004 NFL Draft could be any better than the last couple of abominations. There was still a faint hope that Charles Rogers' collarbone would behave itself and we didn't quite know yet that Charles' body was 70% bong water, and so we still harbored hope that he might be salvageable. But the Joey Harrington dream had died and with it went most of our hopes for anything worth a damn. At best, we hoped that the groundwork could be set for a Millen free future with a few key talented pieces in place for whoever cleaned up the mess of this colossal disaster. So, how did the 2004 NFL Draft contribute to that future? Well . . .
With their first pick in the 2004 NFL Draft, the 7th overall(Hey! They were getting better. Right? RIGHT???)the Detroit Lions selected Roy Williams, a wide receiver out of Texas. It was reported at the time that Williams was number one on the Lions overall draft board so, naturally, excitement for him was high. There was also some bewilderment about his being selected a year after the Lions took Rogers, supposedly their number one receiver of the future. It was also the beginning of the jokes about Millen and his strange affinity for receivers, but that horse has been beaten to death and so we will let it rest in peace.
Things started off well enough with Williams as his first couple of seasons he looked like a young receiver who would only get better, and in his third season, he broke through and ended up in the Pro Bowl. Excitement was high. Here was a legitimate blue chipper that Matt Millen and the Lions could hang their hat on. At least he got that one right. That was the general sentiment. But then Williams faded just a bit the next season and there were signs that he was contracting the dreaded Lions Disease, which had claimed so many others who were forced to slap on a Lions uniform week after week, year after year, including the beloved Barry Sanders. Williams began to sulk on the field, started dropping balls, and by the time the next season rolled around, I was a little worried about old Roy. Still, I thought he could bounce back. And then he went out and proceeded to look like he would rather be chilling on the beach or watching TV at home or lying dead in a ditch than playing for the Detroit Lions and I knew that it was over. Like AIDS, Lions Disease is horrible and incurable, and when he was traded to the Cowboys, it was sad and yet I knew that it was inevitable and so I waved goodbye to Roy Williams and what he could have been and said hello to the draft picks we got in return.
I won't say that Williams was a bust. He was a very good receiver for four seasons with the Lions, a Pro Bowler in one of them, and if he had been on any other team in the league, I think we would still be talking about him as a premier receiver. But, fate was unkind to Roy and he had his soul sucked dry by that hideous shitbeast called failure, and in his despair, he circled the drain until he found himself where he is today - starting over with the Dallas Cowboys, desperate to prove that last year was a glitch. Only time will tell what will happen with Williams, but his story is a sad, shameful one that should be told as the lead in to the entire pathetic Detroit Lions saga. He could have been great, should have been great, but being a Lion caught up to him, and that's really all there is to say about that.
With Williams in the fold, the Lions decided to address their moribund running game, trading up so that they had the 30th pick overall in the first round. And, with it, they selected Kevin Jones, a running back out of Virginia Tech. Going into the draft, there were really only two running backs who carried a first round grade, Jones and Steven Jackson. The Rams snapped Jackson up with the 24th pick leaving Jones to the Lions. At the time, I remember being both happy and slightly disappointed. I thought that Jones would be a quality back, but I liked Jackson better and, although, the Lions really didn't have a legit shot at Jackson, they were tantalizingly close. Still, with Jones set to take over, I figured the Lions had another piece in place for that inevitable day when the villagers would drag that beast Millen out of his lair and burn him alive.
But, things don't always turn out the way that we want - a massive understatement when it comes to the Lions and their fans - and while Jones showed plenty of initial promise, eclipsing the 1,000 yard mark as a rookie, he battled injuries over the next few seasons, the sort that tend to linger and linger and linger and . . . well, you get the point. His inability to stay healthy was bad enough that the Lions released him prior to last season, despite the fact that they had no one else and they were switching to a ball control running game. His release was puzzling to say the least, but then he went to the Bears and did exactly nothing. My thought is that he is damaged goods, unsalvageable, and that's too bad because as a rookie, Jones averaged 4.7 yards a pop and later on he even developed into a decent safety valve receiver out of the backfield. He could have been so much more than he was, but a combination of injuries and being stuck behind the wall of shit that has been the Lions offensive line for years left him bitter and searching for a job last year. At only 26 years old, he found himself seeing only the tiniest amount of time running the ball for the Bears and he's probably done.
With the Lions seemingly shoring up the future of their offense in the first round, they decided to finally fill the hole left in the middle of their defense when Chris Spielman left town. There were a couple of years when Stephen Boyd provided a presence there, but really, since Spielman left, the Lions lacked an identity on defense, and I guess they figured that a decade later it was time to finally fill it. And with their second round pick, the 37th overall, the Lions made an attempt to establish an identity in the middle by selecting Teddy Lehman out of Oklahoma.
Again, this was a pick that at the time I was pretty happy with. Lehman was an uber-productive linebacker at Oklahoma, and although he didn't have the mountain of upside of a high first round pick, he was good enough and productive enough in college that I figured he could step right in and be a starter for years to come. He just seemed like one of those players that was ready made to get in there and go from day one. He had mounds of big game experience and had been on the national stage for a while already. There was a little concern that the Lions were planning to move him to the middle from the weakside, but he seemed to me, what with all that experience, to be someone who could make the transition. All that was left was for him to stay healthy. Yeah, about that . . .
Lehman started all sixteen games as a rookie in the middle for the Lions. He wasn't spectacular, but he was solid enough - pretty much what I expected. In fact, he ended up logging the most plays of anybody on the team. And so, I figured that the Lions had their man for the foreseeable future. And then the injuries started. Over the next three seasons, Lehman failed to start a single game for the Lions. Every year, the hopes that he would be that guy to fill the hole left by Spielman grew dimmer and dimmer until finally, we all just accepted that he was a lost cause. When the Lions finally released him prior to last season, it was met with little more than a shrug. He was just another casualty on the brutal killing fields on which the Lions are eternally trapped.
In retrospect, the Lions 2004 draft was fucking bizarre. On the one hand, Williams, Jones and Lehman all managed at one time or another to be exactly what they were supposed to be. Williams was a Pro Bowler game breaker, and both Jones and Lehman were quality starters as rookies. Three picks, three starters. That seems like it's a quality draft. On the other hand, not one of those three finished the 2008 season with the Lions. Using that measuring stick, it's hard to call this draft anything other than a complete disaster. The only thing that really matters though is that on the Bataan Death March that is the Detroit Lions year in and year out, these three all fell to the side and were bayoneted and hastily buried in a ditch while everyone else wearily trudged on. There's never any time to stop and mourn the dead when there are so many of them, and that's always the case with the Lions. Every year, more and more future stars are injured or come down with Lions Disease or turn their collarbones into a bong and we are left just staring in slack jawed horror wondering when this horrible march will come to an end.
My thoughts are turning dark and if I keep writing I will either slip into twisted gibberish or maudlin sentimentality or, more likely, some fucked up mixture of the two. The Lions tend to do that to me, and so before I start raving about Nazi cannibals or escaped werewolves on PCP and vampire apes, I'll just leave the ruins of the 2004 Draft behind and look forward to 2005 and . . . Mike Williams? Awww . . . son of a . . .
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