Johnny Culbreath

For years, Lions fans have bitched about the state of the offensive line, and, well . . . they’re not wrong. It has been a big problem for way too long. But at the same time, they’re not exactly right either. I know, I know, that sounds confusing and kind of stupid, but I think that it’s true. It comes down to a patience issue more than anything else, I think. People want the quick fix. They want some 9 foot tall behemoth with a dragon’s head and the body of a grizzly bear to descend from the sky and eat Jeff Backus before settling in as our starting left tackle for the next thousand years. And so, every year, when the draft comes and goes and the Lions fail to take an offensive lineman in the first round, those people throw up their hands, gnash their teeth and start muttering about breaking out the torches and pitchforks. It happens every damn year.

I suppose the real crux of the issue is the human lightning rod named Jeff Backus. Now, I’ve written a bit about Jeff Backus here – feel free to search around the site for some of this delightful gibberish – and so I won’t beat the holy hell out of the argument yet again. But here’s the thing about Backus which is important to understand if we’re going to move forward here: he’s both massively underrated and massively overrated. This weird discrepancy is the natural byproduct of arguing in these strange and terrible times, especially when that argument has been going on for a solid decade. Both sides become entrenched and become obsessed more with proving their point than with actually being smart and reasonable and honest about the whole damn thing.

To Backus’ detractors – a group which includes probably the majority of Lions fans - he’s the devil himself, a miserable shit demon made of goo and failure who conspired with the Failure Demons and Julius Peppers to murder Matthew Stafford’s poor shoulder. He is the living symbol of the offensive line, for good or bad, and most people think he should be slung up on a cross and pelted with rocks in order to pay for the offensive line’s many terrible sins.

To Backus’ supporters – a group which includes scouts and his own coaches – Backus is the paragon of excellence, the lone glorious soldier doing all he can to win an unwinnable war, his heart and soul a shiny exemplar for all true warriors the world over. He’s been called the best offensive tackle in the NFC North by this group. He’s been touted as a Pro Bowl caliber player and the stalwart of the Lions offensive line.

Both of these sides are full of shit.

Now, I’m not a fan of the one sentence paragraph, but in this case I think it is justified. I want everybody reading this to internalize that sentence before we move on. Jeff Backus is a B- player who’s managed to hold on for a solid decade at left tackle because the Lions can’t find anybody better to do the job. He’s not the messiah but he’s not the devil either. He’s just a guy who’s a little bit better at his job than the average player would be. That’s not saying much, admittedly, but what people fail to realize is that the number of people who could do that job better – who could do it exceptionally well – is astonishingly small. Elite left tackles are like diamonds wrapped in platinum and blowjobs. If you find one, you should hoard it like Gollum did that goddamn ring.

That’s the real issue here. It’s not whether Jeff Backus is any good or not. He’s not the best but he’s not the worst either and the sooner people come to terms with that on both sides, the better off as fans we’ll all be. No, the real issue is that finding a guy who is obviously better than Backus is at best challenging and at worst almost damn near impossible. There are a lot of tackles drafted in the first round. Every year. And people freak out when the Lions don’t draft one of them, but the thing is, is that the reason why there are so many tackles drafted early is because people league wide have become victims to the same mass hysteria which drives the “Let’s tie Jeff Backus to a boulder and then roll him into the ocean” mindset. Nobody is happy with their starting left tackle, which only reinforces my point that those dudes are really, really hard to find.

That’s the lesson that everyone should learn – that elite left tackles are rare beasts like unicorns or happy Lions fans – and that reaching for one just to reach for one is a fool’s errand, which will inevitably only lead to more heartbreak and folly. But people don’t learn that lesson. Instead they go the other way. In their desperation they grab any tall bum off the street, slap some pads on him and tell him he has to stop Julius Peppers from legally murdering their quarterback. It’s the whole “Well, this sucks, so the alternative has to be better” trap. And the reason it’s such a terrible trap is because when it comes to offensive tackles, no, the alternative isn’t better, it’s usually just more of the same, and in a lot of cases, it’s actually worse.

That’s why so many left tackle prospects are drafted in the first round, because people are desperate to replace their average or shitty left tackle, not because so many of them are actually worthy of being picked that high. Now I’m not saying that you should never pick an offensive tackle in the first round. That would be dumb. (And by the way, that’s the same sort of polarized I MUST PROVE MY POINT AND SO I WILL TAKE THE MOST EXTREME POSITION AVALAIBLE kind of arguing and thinking that I mentioned earlier, which ends up just being only so much dumb noise in a wilderness already filled with the braying idiocy of the dumb and endlessly foolish.) If a guy who you know will actually be better at left tackle is there, then by all means, draft him. If Orlando Pace or Tony Boselli or some dude like that is out there, it would be dumb not to take him. But if that guy isn’t there, don’t turn to the nearest tall, fat dude who managed to play college ball and try to make him that guy. That’s all I’m saying and that’s the trap that too many fans and too many teams fall into.

It’s with all that as the backdrop that year after year Lions fans howl and shoot rifles at the moon and write their Congressman because the Lions passed up yet another possible replacement for the Devil Backus. It’s ridiculous. I mean, all you have to do is take a look at the Lions own history of drafting offensive tackles. Since drafting Lomas Brown in 1985, which worked out pretty damn well, the Lions have drafted 5 offensive tackles in either the first or second round. The list: Juan Roque in 1997, Aaron Gibson in 1999, Stockar McDougle in 2000, Backus in 2001 and Gosder Cherilus in 2008.

Take a moment and let that sink in. Okay, done? Good.

Jeff Backus is the best player on that list. Taking an offensive tackle just to take an offensive tackle because that’s what you’re supposed to do is dumb and those names bear that shit out better than anything I could say. Sure, sure, some of that speaks to the Lions own ineptitude when it comes to scouting and development, but let’s face it, all those players were going to be drafted by somebody early in all of those drafts. It’s not like the Lions were the only team out there willing to take a shot on Aaron Gibson. The names on that list typify the average first round tackle. Most of the time, you’re going to end up with Stockar McDougle instead of Orlando Pace or even Lomas Brown.

Which finally – finally! – brings us to Johnny Culbreath, the Lions 7^th round pick in this year’s Draft. It would seem to me that the Lions coaches and scouts understand all too well everything I just wrote. They are smart guys, guys who pay attention, who understand better than most that you have to draft the right guy at the right time, and that most of the time the tackles who are drafted in the first round are the wrong guys at the wrong time.

Look, it would be great to have a cyborg at left tackle, someone who can show up at camp and shotput Jeff Backus off the field, but if you can’t find the guy who can do that, why bother drafting someone in the first round who’s just going to give you the exact same thing? Or worse, someone who is just going to waste away on the bench because he can’t beat out Backus? That’s pretty much the definition of a wasted pick. And the worst part wouldn’t even be that the dude failed to make the improbable impact fans dream about but it would be that the Lions would have picked him and ignored some other potential impact player. Why draft a dude who’s not really going to improve your team in any meaningful way when you can draft a guy who can immediately improve your team?

I know, I know, I still haven’t talked about Culbreath, but all this horseshit is really about him so hang on. The point is that Jim Schwartz knows that he can’t get a dude who can just step onto the field at left tackle and be demonstrably better than Jeff Backus right away. He just can’t. And he has other needs all over the field, and there are dudes available in every draft who can step in and be demonstrably better right away than the dudes who are playing their positions and so he drafts one of them instead.

But he’s not ignoring the tackle position either, no matter how much the hysterics rant and rave about that being the case. His strategy – since he knows that he can’t find a surefire starting left tackle in the first round – is to look for a guy with a lot of tools late in the draft, a raw player who the coaches can develop into a starter and a force two or three years down the road, so that when the time comes when Backus has to be replaced, the Lions will have someone ready and able to do it. It’s kind of like this: Backus is like an old car, reliable, not too flashy and you know eventually you’re going to need to replace it. But you know that given a variety of factors – your finances, family size, insert whatever you want here – you know that any car that you could buy right now would just give you pretty much the exact same thing. So why even bother to buy a new car that would just be the same as your old car? Why not spend the money on, say, a kickass home theater system or a fine prostitute or maybe even your own private army of highly trained howler monkeys? Or a fine prostitute howler monkey? You know, one that’s had its teeth removed and . . . too far? I’ve gone too far again, haven’t I? The point is, is that you can find other, better uses for that money than just buying another used car which is going to give you the same performance – and the same problems – as the one you already have. But . . . there’s something else you can do too. If you have the know-how – which in this case would be analogous to good coaching – why not pick up an old Mustang or (insert whatever car you want here. I know people get all riled up about cars and get weird and particular about this shit, but I’m not really a car guy, so just imagine your ideal car and go with it, okay?) and then spend the next couple of years fixing that baby up until finally, when your car is ready to go you not only have a new car waiting in the wings but a badass car you built yourself, a car that you can be proud of and show off to all your friends? Fuck buying a used Subaru. Build yourself a goddamn Mustang.

And that’s the Jim Schwartz/Martin Mayhew style: they want to build Mustangs, not buy Subarus. (Nothing against Subaru, I just picked a name out of thin air. Leave me alone, car zealots!) All that is just another way of explaining and restating the Philosophy of Greatness which I have made the central point of all of these draft breakdowns.

It’s obvious that this is their style just by looking at their draft history: in 2009, they drafted Lydon Murtha in the 7^th round. In 2010, they drafted Jason Fox in the 4^th. This year, they drafted Culbreath in the 7^th. Not one of those players was drafted because anyone thought they would kick Backus in the ass and replace him right away. No. They were all drafted with an eye towards the future, because Schwartz and Mayhew looked at them and saw potential Mustangs. Murtha ended up getting caught in a numbers crunch and was poached off of the practice squad by the Miami Dolphins. He started four games for them last season in place of Vernon Carey and looks like he’ll at least be a serviceable NFL player. Fox is still with the Lions and is being groomed for better things. And Culbreath? Well, Culbreath gives the Lions another Mustang to work on in case Fox falls apart or never runs well in the first place.

The Lions know they have issues on the offensive line. The chicken littles running around screeching and bitching and asking anyone who will listen “Why won’t they draaaaaft a taaaaaackle?” need to understand this. I know it’s hard to have faith in the Lions decision makers after every terrible thing that has gone on in the last half century of unnumbered tears. I get it. Believe me, I get it. Just go back to my first post on this blog and start reading forward if you don’t believe me. I understand. It’s hard to accept that things are different and that there is real plan in place, and that the people in charge of this whole thing aren’t blithering idiots but rational, smart dudes who understand both the strengths and weaknesses of this roster. They know that the Lions need to build their offensive line, but they’re trying to do it the smart way, not the fast, sloppy way that most fans seem to want. People want instant gratification and at least in this case, that shit just isn’t possible.

Culbreath isn’t a perfect player. There’s a reason why he didn’t get drafted until the 7^th round. But his biggest flaw seems to be that he’s a raw athlete who isn’t anywhere near being ready to play every week in the NFL. That may frustrate some people, but that’s a correctable problem, you know? If you’re going to have a flaw, that’s the one that you want in a 7^th rounder.

Everything else seems to be there for Culbreath. He’s got good size – 6’5”, 320 lbs plus – he’s strong and he seems to be a pretty good athlete. He originally was headed for Florida St. out of high school but his shitty grades sent him instead to South Carolina St. where he was a four year starter, a conference player of the year and an FCS All-American. So it’s not like the dude is completely unknown. He was dominant at a lower level of football, a level which he was able to dominate through sheer size and athletic ability. He was the proverbial man amongst boys, and in that way he kinda reminds me of Sammie Hill.

If the Lions coaches can develop Culbreath anywhere near as well as they’ve developed Hill, then there’s a good chance that one day Culbreath will be the Mustang the Lions coaches hope he can be. Of course, that comparison isn’t completely fair. After all, while Hill was even rawer than Culbreath is now, and played at even a lower level in college, he also seemed like he had a higher ceiling. Like I said, Culbreath is limited. There are concerns about his feet and his punch coming off the line, but those concerns seem like ones that could be corrected with good coaching and I’m glad that we have a group of people in charge who are confident in their abilities to provide that good coaching. I’ll say again what I said about Doug Hogue: if this were Millen and Marinelli, then I would think this was a lousy pick, a dude who couldn’t possibly pan out because the idea of player development as part of a central, unifying plan was beyond absurd, like the idea of monkey nuclear physicists or, well, Matt Millen as anything other than a giant pile of failure. But with Mayhew and Schwartz, I’m willing to believe what they believe: that they have the ability to build a Mustang out of spare parts and one kick-ass body. (I swear I didn’t mean that to sound as homoerotic/disturbing as it came across. Also, I apologize for using the phrases “homoerotic” and “came across” in the same sentence. Shit, I’ll be right back. I need to get all this out of my system. Maybe I’ll take a break and write some Willie Young erotica. You know you want it! No? Okay, fine.)

And that’s the whole point here, I think – that we need to trust the dudes in charge and believe what they believe. I know that’s a huge leap of faith for some of you to take and I can respect that, but from what I’ve seen from these guys, they get it. They understand how to coach guys up and bring out the best in them. They believe in a Philosophy of Greatness and so do I. I see a pattern in the way that they work and the way that they draft. I see it. And there’s no way I can really explain that without devolving into weird psychotic gibberish and wild grunts and dumb howls that would just leave you shaking your head in disdain. I can see patterns, man, and I know that sounds like the fractured ravings of a loon on mushrooms or with a head full of acid, but goddammit, I can see them. I can. And I like what I see. I see how Johnny Culbreath fits into the bigger plan, how he factors into this new Lions universe. I hope I’ve managed to explain that at least a little bit in this post. I know I keep rambling on about the Philosophy of Greatness and I keep sliding away from the point to explain things that don’t seem like they need to be explained, but they do. They do. Because to me, that’s the whole point here. This Lions universe of ours is complex and bewildering and someone needs to be here to try to make sense of it all and for whatever absurd reason, I have taken that upon myself. I don’t want to just explain Doug Hogue or Johnny Culbreath’s strengths or weaknesses in a vacuum. I wanted to explain them in the context of that larger universe and I hope that I have – at least a little bit.

I’ve begun to ramble (begun???) but what I really wanted to say is that thanks to Jim Schwartz and Martin Mayhew, I can finally make some sort of sense out of the Lions universe that isn’t just a screaming blue light of pain, misery and confusion. The noise of the past has died down a little bit and now I am just watching as the new pieces of this universe slide into place and it makes me smile, like a retarded little kid watching balloons float overhead it makes me smile, because in this universe Johnny Culbreath isn’t just some nobody the Lions picked simply because they had to pick somebody. He’s a part of that universe and I see how he fits – or at least how he’s supposed to fit if everything goes the way it’s supposed to – and that makes me glad.

Of course, I might be drifting too far towards the optimistic, but so what? I recognize that Culbreath may never pan out. I recognize that he might just end up being a practice squad player who gets cut when nobody’s paying attention. I get all that. But then again, maybe he will pan out. Maybe he will one day be that Mustang that we show off and brag about to all of our friends, and really, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? That it’s possible, that even a 7^th round pick like Johnny Culbreath is worth getting excited about because there’s a pattern to it all, this universe is finally starting to make sense and even the smallest details, the smallest picks, even a 7^th rounder like Johnny Culbreath, could be the ones that one day take us to the playoffs and beyond, to an endless horizon where the only limits are our own imaginations and confetti falling from the sky as Roger Goodell hands Old Man Ford the Lombardi Trophy. This may be the dream of the perpetually foolish, the delusions of a broken and shattered and ruined mind, savaged by the unknowable realities of 0-16, but fuck it, what a dream.

Doug Hogue

Doug's the dude standing over the dying guy.

The first time I typed the words Philosophy of Greatness – a phrase I am already threatening to beat into the ground – it was right after the Lions drafted Doug Hogue. I fired that phrase off in the following tweet:

armchairlb: My take on the Lions draft strategy: They're drafting for greatness, not for competence.

Okay, fine, I guess I didn’t exactly type the words “Philosophy of Greatness”, but that’s where the concept sort of took root in my head, and then it grew from there. I applied this philosophy to the Lions decision to draft Nick Fairley, Titus Young and Mikel LeShoure, but like I said, where it really began was with Doug Hogue.

You see, on the surface, there seemed to be a lot more NFL ready players than Doug Hogue available when the Lions drafted him, a lot more finished products, dudes ready to just hit the field running, who didn’t need to be coached up or told to do anything other than what they already knew how to do. They probably weren’t going to bomb out or end up running the wrong way down the field with their pants around their ankles or anything like that but they probably were never going to be anything more than what they already were, which were dudes still available to be drafted in the late rounds of the NFL Draft.

That’s kind of the point. They had already reached their ceiling, their upside, and that ceiling was a fringe NFL player. Okay, good for them. But that’s not exactly someone you get excited about, you know? Instead, what you want out of a pick like that is someone who has room to grow, to get better, maybe someone from a tiny school like Sammie Hill or someone who’s just learning the position like Doug Hogue, someone who can one day make the experts look back and say “Shit, I guess he should have been a first rounder.” Yes, in my world, Mel Kiper starts off all his evaluations on TV with “Shit, I guess . . .” He and Todd McShay then do shots after every 3 picks so by the end of the first round they are pretty deep in the bag, and then by the end of day two they are incoherent and vomiting on Chris Berman (Like that would be the first time Berman’s been vomited on by a plastic robot with fake hair and a bad spray tan. Come on.), and by the end of day three they are being carted off in an ambulance with a priest and an unsuspecting hobo and his sweet, sweet liver. By the time they got to the 7^th round, Kiper would be slurring shit like “You know what, Chris? Yaknowwhat? You ain’t shit, motherfucker. You ain’t shit. I ain’t gonna tell you a damn thing - a damn thing – ‘bout this guy, ‘cause Chris, lemme tell you somethin’ Chris . . . you listenin’ Chris? Good, listen, ‘cause I’m only gonna say this shit once: I don’t give a fuck, Chris. Oh shit, lookit yer hair, motherfucker, it’s all whispy an’ shit. TJ, look at this motherfucker’s hair! How can you stand this cocksucker, TJ? All sweaty an’ gross. Nah, nah, Teej, lissen, man, I respect you ‘cause you been there. You been there. But this motherfucker right here? Thinks he’s a comed . . . comed . . . a funny guy an’ shit. But he ain’t. He ain’t! An’ we all know this shit, Teej. You tol’ me. Yeah, you did! Don’t gimme that look, TJ, you know what you said. You know . . . hey! Todd, get over here motherfucker, they gonna make a new pick. A new pick! Oh shit!!! I was not expectin’ that dude. Todd, you stupid motherfucker, you ain’t ever takin’ my job ‘cause I ain’t goin’ nowhere, but you a good kid, Todd, you a good kid, not like this fat motherfucker here. Berman. Pfffffffffffffffffff. Awwww, shit, someone get me a bucket.”

I’m sorry that things had to get derailed like that, but that was some serious business that needed attending to. Back to the main point – ideally, you want guys at that position with room to grow, as players and, hell, even physically if you get lucky. It’s all about having faith in your own ability as a coach to find that perfect lump of coal that you can squeeze and shape into a flawless diamond. Fuck your chipped stones, let me make my own gems. That’s the mindset that the Lions coaches seem to have and I commend them for it.

There is a tendency to swoon over name players when Draft time comes along. Most fans would rather see their team draft someone like, say, Greg Jones, the Michigan St. linebacker, because they know who he is. But they know who he is because he’s already a finished product. What you already see is what you’re gonna get and that’s that. And while there’s a sense of safety in that – a reassuring devotion to competence which, let’s face it, is something we’ve lacked for a long, long time – there isn’t much upward mobility in such a sentiment. It’s a philosophy that strives for 9-7 and a first round playoff knockout. Could someone like Greg Jones help a decent team? Yes. Probably. Could someone like Greg Jones be a key piece on a championship team in the NFL? No. Probably not. And that’s the whole point. If you can’t eventually say yes to the latter question when you’re evaluating a player in the Draft than why even bother?

The Draft is your opportunity to acquire the raw material with which to build your killing machine. The spare parts that keep it running can be found in free agency or plucked off the waiver wire. But the raw material, the fuel, the heart of that killing machine, comes from the Draft, from the guys you pick out of the crowd and mold into what you need them to be. But that takes confidence, that takes guts and it takes a leap of faith - that you believe in your own fans’ willingness to cut you some slack and give you the benefit of the doubt because you are their head football coach and you know what you’re doing. Rod Marinelli never could have gotten away with that shit because he was Rod Marinelli and deep down we all knew he was a meathead and kind of an oaf, and even worse, that he was hysterically over his head. Even if you were one of those kindly souls who believed in Marinelli for a while, I think that deep down you had to know that he was swimming with sharks in the deepest part of the ocean, only he wasn’t so much swimming as furiously doggy paddling with water wings on his arms. Jim Schwartz, on the other hand, knows exactly what he’s doing. I firmly believe that – and while five years from now someone else might be writing about me being a poor, naïve soul, I think that I’m right about Schwartz and if there’s one thing I’ve learned to trust in my many years wandering in the fan wilderness with the rest of you, it’s to always trust my instincts. I can spot a stink cloud from a mile away. I can pick out the Failure Demons in disguise. These many brutal years have given me that unfortunate gift. And when I look at Jim Schwartz, I see the real deal. I see a man who can lead us out of this valley of darkness and into the Promised Land and so all I can do is trust him and try to understand his ways.

That may sound like senseless cheerleading, and in a sense it is. Cheerleading anyway. But it’s not senseless. It’s very much sensitive. The whole reason I’m cheerleading is because my senses tell me to, because they tell me that this is the right guy at the right time. At some point, you just have to take a leap, otherwise what’s the point? I don’t wanna be one of those dudes who’s sitting back and saying “Yeah, well we’ll see . . .” and scoffing and mocking his fellow fans and missing all the fun. I don’t want to look back after it’s all over and like a drunken Mel Kiper say to myself “Well shit, I should have known.” I trust myself and so I’m trusting Jim Schwartz. You can point out all the reasons why this is illogical but frankly, my dear, I don’t give a fuck. (It’s 2011, Rhett Butler, “damn” doesn’t quite carry the same weight as it did during your Puritan days.)

I don’t mean to turn this into a Rah Rah post or a defensive gibberfest about why I feel the way I do. I really don’t. But I felt that all of that was necessary in order to fully get across where we are as fans, and why Jim Schwartz does things the way he does. He does things like draft Nick Fairley or Doug Hogue because whether he knows it or not, he has a mandate to do so. He has been given a mandate to reach for greatness instead of for settling for competence. Every time Lions fans shake his hand and buy season tickets and high five and write breathless love notes to him on the internet, that mandate is strengthened. We’re all in this together and we’re all in this to the glorious end. We don’t want to settle for Purgatory, for that wandering plain between heaven and hell that so many fan souls occupy. No. We want paradise. We have known the fires of hell and now we will accept nothing less than the milk and honey of the Promised Land. And the only way to do that is to reach for it, to draft for greatness instead of competence.

Which finally – finally! – brings us to Doug Hogue. How does he fit in with this Philosophy of Greatness? Well, I’ve referenced him several times already – which makes sense given that this post is, you know, about him and everything – and so by now you should have kind of a sense of how he fits in with the overall plan. He’s raw – really raw – maybe not so much as, say, Sammie Hill but raw nonetheless.

Hill, if you’ll remember, played at some tiny, tiny Southern School that sounded like it was a made up school from The Cosby Show or A Different World and while I can’t say for sure whether this means that Sammie Hill ended up banging Denise Huxtable in the broom closet of Professor Cornell West’s office underneath a blacklight poster of Martin Luther King, what I can say for sure was that this meant that Sammie Hill was playing football against dudes who were probably worse than the average high school player in a city like Dallas or Orlando or, yes, Detroit. His technique was nonexistent, his knowledge of advanced schemes as mystifying to him as advanced theoretical physics, and yet he ended up on the field a lot as a rookie and, honestly? He wasn’t that bad. He certainly showed enough to convince everybody that he could one day be a real force and although his playing time was tempered a bit by the arrival of Corey Williams and The Lord of the House of Spears, our man Suh, whenever he was on the field there was still a sense of calm, and that everything would be alright because Sammie Hill was already a pretty damn good football player.

I bring all that up to show how ridiculously fast Sammie Hill adapted to the pro game. Now, whether this was because he’s simply a really, really quick learner or because the coaches are that good is up for debate. It’s probably a little bit of both. But honestly, this just lends more credence to my belief that these coaches are for real and that their philosophy is not only a good one, but one which will lead us to those places which we’ve previously only visited in our wildest dreams.

And the point – finally! – is that Doug Hogue is not nearly as raw as Sammie Hill. He played linebacker for Syracuse, a BCS team in a BCS league, and he managed to end up as an All Big East First Team selection his senior year. So, he’s already shown himself to be a capable linebacker against elite competition (yeah, yeah, the Big East isn’t exactly the SEC but it’s still a BCS league, so just go with me on this . . .), and he has good size, outstanding speed and is a big hitter. So . . . why is he someone who needs to be molded?

Because Doug Hogue has only played linebacker for a couple of years. Prior to that, he played running back for Syracuse. So what we have here is a player who is highly gifted physically who might not know what the hell he is doing. So what does that mean?

Well, to me, it’s kind of perfect. We have a player here whose only real limitations are mental, whose areas of concern can all be addressed simply by good coaching. He has the physical tools necessary to excel at the NFL level, now it’s just a matter of molding them and honing them and turning them in the direction desired by the coaches. Again, if Rod Marinelli were here, I’d expect Doug Hogue to flounder through training camp, maybe last a couple of weeks into the season and then get cut after Bonzaing his way down the field on a kickoff and accidentally tackling Roary, the Lions perpetually stoned mascot. (Honestly, just seek out a picture of Roary if you don’t believe me and look at his eyes. So fucking high.) Marinelli wouldn’t have a fucking clue what to do with him. But Jim Schwartz and Gunther Cunningham do. A dude like this is right in their wheelhouse. They’ve already shown their ability to mold raw clay with Sammie Hill, and now they have a chance to do it with Doug Hogue.

But again, Hogue isn’t nearly as raw as Hill. Yeah, he hasn’t been playing the position very long, which has caused some problems when it comes to play recognition and the instinct which comes from sheer muscle memory, but he adapted well enough to be a first team all-league performer in a BCS conference. So obviously, the dude understands at least a little bit what he’s doing.

But even if he didn’t get it at all, the raw clay parts of him are exciting enough on their own. The dude is 6’3” and 235 lbs and he runs anywhere from a 4.5 to a 4.6 forty yard dash, which for a linebacker is – and I’m going to use a purely technical term here – fucking fast. He’s still got that running back athleticism but he’s got a linebacker build, and also an apparent desire to smash people as a human missile. That will help him - and us – immediately on special teams. Hell, Doug Hogue was damn near made to be a special teams animal. And from all accounts, Hogue has even more room to grow. He packed on an additional ten pounds in between the end of his senior season and the Draft without affecting his speed. His high school coach basically said that Hogue had never even seen a weight before he got to college. This guy is almost the living definition of raw clay.

Of course, that has its downsides too. He’s still not very strong at the point of attack, probably thanks to the lack of weight training and he struggles to get off of blocks. Ideally, Hogue would be able to play behind a dominant defensive line that occupies blockers and lets the linebackers run free and hit with evil intentions. And, well . . . have you seen the dudes the Lions are going to be lining up along the defensive line? If there was ever a perfect situation for Doug Hogue to maximize his potential while minimizing his weaknesses, it’s this one.

But even those weaknesses should smooth out over time. He’ll get more time with the weights and as he adjusts to the speed of the pro game, his instincts will only get better and better. Add in the fact that he probably has some more good weight to put on his frame and the final result has the potential to be absolutely frightening. There are no limits here other than what the coaches can teach him and what Hogue is willing to work for. That is the epitome of the Philosophy of Greatness. Chances are that Hogue will never be anything more than an ace special teams player and hey, that’s pretty damn good too, you know? But there is also a decent chance that he could develop into a true impact linebacker, a player with the size, speed and skill to punish opposing ball carriers, and the athleticism to cover tight ends and the speed to even cover the occasional slot receiver in space.

I’m not saying that Doug Hogue is the second coming of Dick Butkus or even the second coming of Ernie Sims, and I’m not saying that he’ll ever reach the full breadth of his potential, but he could and that’s the point. That is drafting for greatness, not for competence and that’s what the Philosophy of Greatness is really all about. So welcome, Doug Hogue, the future is a million miles away, but with players like you, we finally have a chance to at least imagine what that future could look like and that’s why I’m smiling and why I finally – finally! – believe in the Detroit Lions. It’s about damn time.