Continuing on with this never ending draft review, we find ourselves wading through the middle and late rounds, that time during the draft when the idiots still hanging out in the bleachers at the Draft try to keep themselves entertained and Mel Kiper, Todd McShay and company blather on endlessly about Player A's upside and Player Z's lack of height and Player R's hands being too small and Coach Y's hatred of players named Bill and General Manager T's predilection for Thai hookers and on and on and on and . . .
Basically, it becomes a never ending sea of banality and hype that starts to border on parody, the TV screen filled with endless charts and lists and best available players and so on, and yet people still treat each pick their team makes as if it's a decision on par with those made during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Choose wisely and there are sighs of relief and people smiling at each other and shaking stranger's hands in the streets. Choose poorly, and there are people stocking up on food and ammo, desperately digging holes in their backyards to house a fall out shelter and punching random strangers in the streets who get in their way.
The boring reality is that most of the players picked from here on out end up either being fringe contributors or working as salesmen, bagging groceries or dead in a ditch. But . . . but . . . TOM BRADY!!! Yeah, yeah, there are obvious exceptions to the rule, but for the most part, these are not dudes who are going to set the world on fire with the magnificence of their stardom. Still, for die hard fans, these guys mean something if only because they end up contributing to the depth of a team and to the special teams and because they give us all one more player to bitch about or to hold up as being unjustly ignored by the idiot coaches. And because, deep down, we want to believe that every pick our team makes will end up being Tom Brady.
For the Lions though, this particular draft seems especially meaningful. It's the first for the new regime, and given the decrepit state of the team, every pick seems amplified. A seventh rounder this year feels much more important than it normally does because the Lions are building from scratch. Actually, that's not even true. An expansion team builds from scratch. The Lions, however, find themselves in the oh so fun position of having to get out from underneath the mountain of shit suffocating them for the last decade(really, the last fifty years, but fuck it, let's not get morbid). In order to move forward, the Lions first have to undo the damage that has already been done and then they can start to build. This takes both time and new players. And that's what makes this year's edition of the draft seem so important. Even depth players, practice players, guys who run down and smack somebody in the mouth on a kickoff, seem vitally important right now. Everything is needed, and every pick gives the Lions one more thing that they didn't have before. It's a monumental task, awful and full of terror and madness, and yet, they are trying. And in the open sewage system that is Detroit Lions football, that is either a monument to dedication and perseverance or to thunderous stupidity and rampant foolishness. Maybe a little bit of both. But the thing about being a die hard football fan or a coach or a GM is that the alternative is to simply not care and that is unfathomable. It sucks and it is ridiculous but there are times when it is fun and exciting as hell and glorious. Really, it's all silly, foolishness really, but if you're going to get behind the wheel, you might as well drive the damn thing as hard as you can for as long as you can. And so coaches, GM's, etc. do everything they can to build no matter how daunting the task and fans parse over every pick, every personnel decision no matter how minute. We're all buffoons to care about such things, and yet, here we are.
Okay, enough blathering and aimless hooting. Christ, at second glance, that really was some meandering shit, but fuck it, it's there and I don't feel like changing it. Let's just get on with this nonsense.
With their lone fourth round pick, their only one until the sixth round, the 115th pick overall, the Detroit Lions selected Sammie Lee Hill, a giant defensive tackle out of tiny Stillman College(Stillman University? The University of Stillman? Hell, I don't know. Stillman College sounds right.)
Hill is an interesting pick. Scouts say he has the raw athleticism to be special, the type of player who one season goes from being a project to an All Pro assbeater, the sort of player that the Cowboys loved to draft and hone into killer werewolf vampire beasts during their glory years. And it comes at a position where the Lions need a ton of help(well, where don't they). Unfortunately, the Lions need that help now and Hill probably won't be ready for another couple of seasons.
You see, while Hill has a ton of natural talent, blessed with the sort of size and athleticism that causes coaches and scouts to rub themselves as if they are hoping a genie pops out, he is basically a neophyte when it comes to the game of football. Hill himself has said that he was so big and so strong that the coaches just let him go out there and throw the players around without worrying about a trifling thing like technique. That sounds almost exactly like the sort of thing you hear from extremely talented high school recruits, players who dominate because, physically, they are on a whole different level than everyone else on the field. And then they get to college and typically, they struggle a bit once they realize that everybody there is special. They get better once they receive the proper teaching, and once they get the technique down, they combine that with their natural ability to become difference makers. The problem with this is that Hill isn't going to be a freshman in college. Instead, he's heading to the NFL, where the learning curve is not just steep but damn near vertical. It's a long, hard mountain to climb and everyone involved, from management, to the coaches, to the fans, to Hill himself, needs to have the patience of the Dalai Lama if this is going to work out.
Can it work out? Certainly. He apparently has all the talent to make it, and from what I've read, he seems to have the sort of mentality, the humility and the drive, to get to where he and everybody else wants him to go. The place where the Lions find themselves - standing on the hell side of the River Styx while Charon points and laughs at them from the opposite shore - can probably serve as both a help and a hindrance to Hill's chances. Because they are so bad(and really, bad is not the word here - you almost need to make up a word for what the Lions are), Hill will probably have the chance to grow as a player without the pressure to be good for a while. In a way, he mirrors the franchise as a whole. There are no expectations here - at least for a couple of seasons anyway, and as they try to swim back across that horrible river from hell, everyone expects there to be regular drownings and comical dog paddling that leads nowhere. But there is a downside to the Lions being so unbearably awful, and that is that fans will start clamoring for Hill whether he is ready or not. Simply because there is little attractive in front of him on the depth chart, Hill will probably start getting a cult following that will grow and grow until idiots start yammering on talk radio about how the Lions should just put him in there already. If the coaches ignore all this bullshit then Hill should be fine. If they give in and throw him out there before he's ready, well, this whole experiment could end up sinking permanently to the bottom of that awful river.
I know that doesn't really fit with what I said about Matt Stafford and my belief that they should just throw him out there, but the difference between Stafford and Hill in terms of polish and readiness might as well be the difference between, well, between a highly regarded college junior at a major program in the most highly regarded college football conference in the country and, really, a high school senior.
Will Sammie Lee Hill make it? If I had to say, I'd say sure, why not? But that could just be because I am riding that irrational wave of exuberance and optimism that comes with the unknown. He could end up washing out of the league entirely and we could all be shaking our heads sadly at one of the first casualties of the ill fated Mayhew/Scwhartz era. But that is a terrible thought, appalling and vicious, and after the hell Lions fans have been through, the appalling and the vicious can wait a while. For now, I will watch with hope and I will keep an eye on Sammie Lee Hill and try to imagine that one day he will be playing in Honolulu while the Lions relax after a long, hard run deep into the playoffs. It is probably a fool's hope, but fuck it, we are all fools for following such things anyway.
What they could have done differently: D.J. Moore, a cornerback out of Vanderbilt, somehow slipped to the 119th pick and the Lions certainly need help in the defensive backfield. Moore probably could have come in and helped right away, but he lacks ideal speed and is probably best suited to the Cover 2 and it seems that scheme has been exorcized from Ford Field and had its corpse set on fire and buried on unconsecrated ground where hopefully it won't end up creating zombie dogs or something out of a Stephen King novel. So, yeah, he probably wasn't the best fit for what the Lions want to do. They could have also taken Terrance Taylor, a run stuffing nose tackle out of Michigan. He probably would have been of more immediate help, but his upside probably doesn't come near matching Hill's. I would have been happy with Taylor here, but Hill is a pick for the future, and if he works out, he's the type of player who ends up making a good team great. Think Leon Lett or Larry Allen.
What we can expect this season: Nothing much. Hill will probably be buried deep on the bench, and will receive plenty of attention during practice. He's the definition of a project player and if the Lions are smart, he'll see as little of the field as possible this season. I wouldn't be surprised to see him wander into the rotation towards the end of the season though as the Lions try to get him a feel for what real NFL game action is like. I would be okay with that, but don't expect him to see any real meaningful time. Of course, there will probably be people who holler and scream about how the Lions should just put him in there and I expect there to be some of that this season, but talk radio and the like is filled with that sort of inanity and everyone would just do best to ignore Tom from Okemos who thinks the Lions should start Hill and that Drew Stanton would throw for 6,000 yards and run for another 2,000 if they would only give him the chance.
Early Pick Grade: B. This could easily be an A+ if Hill works out. This could also be an F if he washes out. I think it's a good pick for where they got him. It's a place where you can take a project player and if he doesn't work out, it's not that catastrophic. But I'm not going to give it an A just based on pure potential. I'm not that starry eyed. There is a very real chance that Hill ends up not making it, and given what I mentioned earlier about the critical importance of this draft, that's a real risk. Fourth rounder or not, the Lions really do need somebody here who is going to help them sooner or later. I am optimistic and I like the pick. I just hope that in a few years I'm not cursing these dudes and shaking my head sadly when I think of Sammie Lee Hill.
No comments:
Post a Comment