Amari Spievey

I could tell you right here that the Lions cornerbacks were bad last season, but you already knew that. Besides, bad is a hysterical understatement. The Lions cornerbacks over the last couple of seasons have been apocalyptically terrible. Watching them has been exercise in maintaining my hold on reality. They are so terrible that it feels like some sort of weird inter-dimensional wormhole between our world and some demon hell world has been opened up leading to the inevitable chaos which ensues, a fucked up sort of purgatory where the players all appear to be men but could very well be Failure Demons in disguise. Every time an opposing quarterback gets the ball away, I half expect to see some asshole with horns and goat legs sprinting across the field, cackling maniacally.

So yeah, it's been bad. To illustrate my point further, and much less ridiculously, I only have to point to the news that the 49ers signed Will James yesterday, which led to a spate of comments about how James was the best cornerback the Lions had last season. James will be competing just to make the roster in San Francisco. Or, as I put it on Twitter last night(and by the way, feel free to follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/armchairlb), Dick "Night Train" Lane would have been the best Lions cornerback last season. And I'm not talking about Dick Lane from his prime, I'm talking about Dick Lane now, and that dude is 83 years old. Also, I would be remiss if I didn't point out how awesome a name like Dick Lane is. That's the sort of name you just don't see anymore. Very Post-War Don Draperesque Americana right there.

The point of all that gibberish is that coming into the draft, the Lions really, really needed help at cornerback. That is not exactly a revelation gleaned from the Burning Bush(I could make an absolutely filthy joke right here, but I am a gentleman and so I will refrain.), and if you asked any Lions fan on the street what the Lions need in order to get better, you would first hear a million jokes about how they never will and then a bunch of lame hackneyed comments about the Ford family and maybe a few potshots at Matt Millen and probably some bitching and moaning about Jeff Backus and then after a round of tears and possibly even some vomiting the word cornerback would be thrown around.

It's become a perpetual problem, an issue on par with the offensive line in the minds of Lions fans. And like the offensive line, it has threatened to become a reflexive issue, one that people don't even think about before spouting off venomous nonsense. It will likely be this way even after the situation has stabilized and will continue as an echo that never quite dies for many Lions fans for years and years and years. No matter what happens, there will always be that vague feeling down deep that the Lions cornerbacks aren't good enough. They could win back to back Super Bowls and people would still wish that things were better back there. This is what failure breeds, The Fear, and no position on defense has been infected with The Fear more than the cornerbacks.

Normally, this would cause people to flip out and demand that the Lions take a cornerback with the first available pick. That didn't happen this year for a couple of different reasons. First of all, Ndamukong Suh's overwhelming status as King of the Draft led people to not only accept but demand his selection with the second overall pick. And secondly, for those hold-outs who are owned by The Fear, cornerback still hasn't reached the level of irrational savagery inspired by the offensive line, and more specifically, left tackle. So, the general consensus amongst Lions fans was that the team should draft Suh, with a minority of perpetual sadsacks demanding that the team draft a left tackle like Russell Okung.

This created a situation where the top cornerback prospects in the draft were sort of ambiguous names to Lions fans, floating somewhere in the ether. Fans were aware of them, but they weren't following them like the Stage 4 Stalkers top cornerback prospects usually have up their asses. A name like Joe Haden seemed agreeable but only as a last resort in the event of a trade. The name Kyle Wilson was thrown around, but not until the second round. There were others, but there wasn't really one particular cornerback prospect who Lions fans salivated over.

There were the expected rumblings from the expected places when the Lions traded up to take Jahvid Best, grumblings from the perpetually dissatisfied that the Lions should have stood still and taken a cornerback with their second round pick. Of course, had they done that, people would have then freaked out and bitched that the Lions reached for the best available corner and Oh Lord, what about running back and linebacker and . . . you see, it really didn't matter what the Lions did there, people would have found a reason to be unhappy.

The way I look at it is like this - the Lions wanted Jahvid Best and they reached out and grabbed him. I discussed all of this in my last post about Best so I won't go too far into it here. But if you refer back to what I said in that post about taking a guy you want versus taking a guy you need, I think it should become clear that the Lions made the right move by not standing pat and taking a cornerback with their second pick. If they had, it would have been a guy that they took because they needed him, not because they wanted him. Again, refer back to my last post to see why that's an important distinction.

The harsh reality facing the Lions, though, is that they still did need a cornerback and they weren't going to be able to continue patching things up with one year deals given to retread free agents. That shit hasn't even come close to working. At some point, they needed to draft a young player who they could groom to be a long time starter. They really haven't done this since drafting Bryant Westbrook in 1997. That's an absurdly long time to go without ever developing a starting cornerback on your own and it goes a long way in explaining why the cornerback position has been so terrible for so long.

It's true that there have been players drafted at cornerback since then. Andre Goodman, Keith Smith and Stanley Wilson were all third round picks the team planned on developing but they never bothered to get around to doing so. All three languished in a kind of weird purgatory before either migrating to other teams or disappearing from the football map altogether. At some point, you have to draft a player and you have to stick him on the field. You can't be constantly searching for a better solution while hoping and praying that your young prospect will magically develop thanks to the kindness of a genie or magician. Goodman, Smith and Wilson were always sort of stuck away in some weird "Break Only In The Event Of An Emergency" case until they withered and became useless so that when the emergency did come, that case was broken and its contents just crumbled into dust.

All of this long and drawn out lead-up is a way of explaining that the Lions needed to draft a cornerback in this draft but they had to pick the right time to make this happen. Pick a guy too early and you reach for an inevitable dud. Wait too long and you end up with just another body to be thrown on the pile and then burned after yet another massacre of a season. Unfortunately, this is an incredibly difficult thing to do. You need to have the right player and the right time synch up in order for it to work. It's easy to mess up if you're not completely competent and even if you are, circumstances beyond your control can ruin it for you.

And so that's the situation the Lions found themselves in when they drafted Amari Spievey, a cornerback out of Iowa. Spievey(and oh yeah, it's pronounced Spuh-vay for some ridiculous reason)was never considered a top prospect in the draft. He is what he is, which is a third or fourth round prospect. There is no real boom or bust potential here, just a hard nosed, blue collar player with some limitations who was going to be an effective player for whoever drafted him. He'll likely never be a star - which is why he was always considered a mid-round pick - but he's not just a raw athlete with a 10% chance to be great and a 90% chance to flame out like so many of these guys are. He's a football player, he knows his job and he can do it reasonably well.

Look, I know that's not all that inspiring, but for a third round pick at a position of need, I'll take it. We need stability here. We need base-hits, not home runs, because we're down by 12 runs in the bottom of the 8th inning and this shit is going to take time, you know? You have to have the Spieveys before you can freak out and start going for the future Deions and Champ Baileys.

But what exactly does that mean? What are we really getting with Spievey? Well, let's take a look, shall we?

There is a pretty clear consensus about Spievey in the scouting reports, which is that he is probably a perfect cornerback for a Cover-2 system. He's tough, he's physical, he's smart and he tackles really, really well. In fact, he was second on Iowa's team last year in solo-tackles, a shocking achievement for a cornerback. But he's also not the best at matching up man to man with a receiver. He's not the sort you're going to see mirror a receiver and run his route for him and he's susceptible to being beaten deep one on one.

The picture that is painted is of a cornerback who is perfectly suited to playing in a zone, a player who can come up and stick a ball-carrier or sit back and jump routes. And when a receiver does make a catch, he should go down right away. From excellent Iowa blog Black Heart Gold Pants:

he usually puts his shoulder right through the receiver's thigh. Play over, gain of four, second down.

Again, not exactly uber-inspiring, but that's the sort of solid, attention to detail sort of play that every team needs as its foundation.

The obvious thing here would be to mark Spievey as a bit of a fish out of water with the Lions. He's probably not going to be a lockdown cornerback in man coverage, and he's ideally suited for a system the Lions don't run, the Cover-2, so why draft him?

Well, for starters, he's almost exactly the sort of cornerback that Jim Schwartz has always loved, the smart, physical kind that can step up and tackle. He's got good size, another thing that Schwartz looks for in his cornerbacks, and he should be able to stick with most players in the league by virtue of his sheer physicality.

According to New Era Scouting, he should be able to hold up in press coverage, even if he hasn't had a lot of opportunity to do so thanks to the system he played in at Iowa:

Because of his long arms and physical playing style, it stands to reason that Spievey could hold up in press situations, but it might not ever be his strong suit.

There has already been some talk of Spievey playing exclusively at nickleback, matched up perhaps on a slot receiver, someone who probably isn't going to burn him deep. This probably isn't the best idea since, again, from New Era Scouting:

Doesn’t have the best change of direction ability, so he can be beaten by smaller, quick receivers.

So that's probably not the best idea. You can easily see a receiver breaking out of the slot and curling in front of Spievey while Spievey struggles to adjust. Therefore, as a cornerback, I think Spievey's future lies on the outside, playing press coverage on bigger, more physical receivers. I think that there will be a lot of wars involving Spievey and his receiver. He's going to beat the other dude up and make him work for everything and, hey, that's okay. You can win with a guy like that.

But what about his lack of speed, his tendency to get burned? Won't that hurt him if he lines up one on one with a receiver on the outside in man coverage? Well, Black Heart Gold Pants assuages those fears a little bit:

At Iowa, he was the most special cornerback we've ever watched. He got torched once against Illinois in '08 and once against Penn State in '09. Those happened and you're free to read as much as you please into those plays, but also consider that they're the only two times that he got torched. It's not as if he's just plain too slow.

So, yeah, it sounds like he should be okay on the outside. He might never be a number one lockdown cornerback, but he should be fine as a dude who's matched up with bigger, more physical receivers. And when he does come up against a guy whose speed can give him problems, he should be able to beat the guy up a bit, get in his head and take him out of the game that way.

There has been speculation that Spievey's future could lie at safety, and for a while I was kind of thinking the same thing. After all, his strengths - the tackling, size, physicality, etc. - could all be accentuated at safety, while his weaknesses - pure covering ability, pure speed, comfort in man defense - could be masked there. But the more I looked at Spievey and, hell, even since I started writing this breakdown, the more convinced I became that his future was at cornerback and that he should be a good one. He'll almost definitely never be a great one - his limitations are probably too much to overcome - but he should be a good one. And for a third round pick at a position of extreme need, that's more than okay.

HOW HE FITS WITH THE LIONS

Well, ideally, Spievey wouldn't have to carry a huge load as a rookie, but he might have to anyway. He's already drawn a lot of comparisons to last year's third round pick, DeAndre Levy. Both were starters for good Big 10 programs who were fairly unheralded and both were considered solid prospects with obvious limitations. Last year when the Lions drafted Levy, everyone fretted - myself included - worried that the Lions had reached with the pick. But then Levy went out and played really well as a rookie, enough so that most of us are completely comfortable with the idea of him starting at middle linebacker in his second year. If the Lions are able to duplicate their success that they had with Levy as a third round pick with Spievey this season then we'll be overjoyed.

Of course, there is no real reason to compare the two beyond the fact that both were Big 10 defensive players picked in the third round. It's just an easy thing to point to, a beacon of hope floating somewhere in the wrecked landscape that lies behind us. We can look at that and say "See? These guys know what they're doing after all." It makes us believe that Spievey will be fine because hell, it worked with Levy, right?

But that's not fair to Spievey. Levy wasn't thrown right into the fire as a rookie. He was able to sit behind and learn from Larry Foote. Sure, he played a lot and by the end of the season he might have been the Lions best linebacker, but the pressure wasn't on him to come in and make a difference like it is on Spievey.

You see, for Spievey there is no Larry Foote. There is nothing but the wreckage of a thousand dead bodies, smoldering heaps of flesh left over from the terrible massacres which have plagued this land for years. He is being counted on to come in and stabilize a position that has spun so far out of control that 100 Spievey's couldn't stabilize it in one season.

Spievey is in a tough situation. The Lions need him to perform well and they need him to do it right away. Right now, there is Chris Houston and little else. The Lions also brought in Jonathan Wade, but he's not a starter. Houston has his own problems and limitations. In many ways, he's the exact opposite of Spievey, a burner who doesn't bring a whole lot else to the table. But maybe that's okay. Maybe Houston can match up with the speed receivers. He can keep tight coverage and if he learns to get his head around on the ball he could be okay. Meanwhile, Spievey can take on the sort of receivers who would give Houston problems, the tough, physical assholes who will beat up on a defensive back to get open. Spievey should have no problems beating them up right on back.

WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE FUTURE

Spievey is probably never going to be star. I have said that, or a variation of that, many times in this post, but it's important both to say and accept. If we expect Spievey to be something that he's never going to be then of course he will seem like a disappointment. But if we see him for what he is, which is a solid, tough cornerback who will mostly get the job done even if he gives up a deep ball from time to time, then we'll probably end up being pretty happy with him.

Spievey is a foundational player, the kind of player you need to become a winner. They can't all be stars. Some of your starters have to be the fairly anonymous blue collar types who somehow still manage to get the job done. This is Amari Spievey and hopefully he'll be here doing that here for several years.

WHAT IT MEANS FOR THIS SEASON

Well, Spievey is going to be tossed right into the fire. He's going to play right away and he's going to play a lot. Even if he doesn't start, he'll still see the field simply because there isn't anyone else. A cynic would say that this is a recipe for disaster. But we are not cynics. We are poor, doomed romantics, optimists who have had our hearts broken year after year and, as such, we desperately want to believe.

Do I believe? Yeah, I do. But aside from simply wanting to believe, I think that Spievey has the sort of mental toughness and mental sharpness that Jim Schwartz loves. That's why he drafted him and that's why he should be able to survive his journey into the inferno.

I said something over and over again last year in my draft recaps: Welcome to Hell. Well, Amari Spievey, welcome to Hell. It's hot, it sucks, but we're fighting back and even though many brave souls will perish in the flames, you are now a warrior of light in a dark and terrible place and the only thing you can do is fight, and fight hard. Welcome to Detroit.