What a crazy Friday in Detroit Lions land. First off the Lions decided to move on from their partnership with 97.1 The Ticket in favor of WJR. Inciting 97.1 personality Mike Valenti to go on a rant claiming that the Lions would have stayed if Valenti was fired. A lot of words were thrown around like “propaganda” and “the Lions site should be illegal.” We will never truly know what went down between the Lions and Valenti. In the end it doesn’t matter.
But that’s not what we’re here to talk about. Somewhere in all the madness, Lions fans got to meet their teams new president today. It was an interesting press conference that somehow sparked more questions than answers and left fans a little worried that history is repeating itself. Out of all the things to be seen in today’s press conference, here’s what stood out the most to me.
First impressions are important
First off I can certainly appreciate that Wood is a life long Lions fan. It’s a pretty good indication that the passion to win will be there. I can also appreciate that Wood admits that the team does not have the knowledge to search and find a proper GM candidate for the Lions. Hence the team’s decision to move forward with guidance from the NFL in their search. Then he said this.
New Lions president Rod Wood: "I would probably say that Im not qualified to run any other NFL team but I think I'm qualified to run this 1"
— Dave Birkett (@davebirkett) November 20, 2015
That’s a huge red flag. To expound further on that, the worry obviously has to be that this guy got the gig cause he know’s the Fords. It’s not out of the Lions wheelhouse to give their presidency to a friend of the family. After all Tom Lewand was good friends with Bill Ford Jr.
Lions positional analysis: Pass Protection
I can’t dispute Wood’s business acumen. He’s obviously successful when it comes to managing finances. In a lot of way’s that’s good for the Lions who have been one the leagues worst financially ran teams in the NFL for some time. But this hiring did and still does feel very underwhelming. Conclusions can’t be jumped to just yet. But this seems like history repeating itself.
Other little things that I noticed are: This guy looks a lot like Richard Gere, star of such films as Pretty Woman and Pretty Woman. He ducked and dodged a lot of different questions today, citing that he was not qualified to answer. Seems smart, but also seems like can and will be controlled. Due to his name I thought his first words at the podium would be “which one of you ladies ordered the pizza?” and he won his fantasy league one year. At least we know he has some idea on how to build a team.
Who really knows? All anyone can do is see how it plays out. Buckle up Lions fans.