The 2011 Detroit Lions Draft Debacle: Trade Edition
By Jeff Risdon
Detroit Lions fans know all too well the sad outcome of the 2011 NFL Draft. Few teams have ever had less to show for an entire draft class than what Detroit got from Martin Mayhew’s darkest hour as GM.
Not one player Mayhew selected was still with the team after the 2014 season. Not one player was deemed worthy of a second contract in Detroit.
Most fans know the names in all their ignominy…
- First Round: Nick Fairley
- Second Round: Titus Young
- Second Round: Mikel Leshoure
- Fifth Round: Doug Hogue
- Seventh Round: Johnny Culbreath
While Mayhew wasn’t as active as he was in the 2010 Draft, he still put on his trading hat. It didn’t fit well.
The first trade didn’t come until after Mayhew had already tabbed Fairley and Young. Former head coach Jim Schwartz told myself and a couple other members of the Detroit media (and Jim Miller from Sirius NFL Radio) at the 2012 Senior Bowl that the team turned down offers to trade back from the No. 14 spot because, and I remember this quote vividly, “we f***ing wanted Nick f***inkg Fairley.”
Leshoure was the trade target in the second round, though the trade was a monster. Mayhew dealt a package of picks to Seattle for a return bounty. Here’s the skinny from Pro Sports Transactions:
"Traded 2011 third round pick (#75-John Moffitt), 2011 fourth round pick (#107-Kris Durham), 2011 fifth round pick (#154-Richard Sherman), 2011 seventh round pick (#205-Lazarius Levingston) to Seahawks for 2011 second round pick (#57-Mikel Leshoure), 2011 fifth round pick (#157-Doug Hogue), 2011 seventh round pick (#209-Johnny Culbreath) on 2011-04-29"
In essence, the Lions dealt their third and fourth round picks for Seattle’s second round selection, which Detroit used on Leshoure. The teams also swapped fifth and seventh round slots to try and even out the (terribly antiquated) trade chart values.
Adding the Illinois running back was a move I supported at the time. Jahvid Best, the first-round RB acquired via trade just one year earlier, had well-known durability issues and the Schwartz regime never had much faith in Kevin Smith. Leshoure was a physical pounder, an inside/out one-cut ball of knees and shoulder. He would have made a great complement to Best’s outside freewheeling. I really liked Leshoure during Senior Bowl week that draft year, and I know Schwartz and his staff did as well.
Alas, the best-laid plans often go to waste. Leshoure tore his Achilles in preseason and missed his entire rookie year. By the time he got back on the field in 2012, after serving a two-week suspension for PEDs he (allegedly) took to accelerate his recuperation, Best was already gone due to post-concussion syndrome. Leshoure topped 100 yards in his first game back but never regained the burst out of cuts that made him special enough to trade away so much draft capital. He carried the ball just two more times in a Detroit uniform, and has been unable to get back into the league after being released by the Lions in the middle of the 2013 season.
What happened to the picks traded away?
Moffitt never panned out for Seattle. Interestingly, the offensive guard from Wisconsin also served a PED suspension and his career was also over by the end of the 2013 season, when he unexpectedly retired. After a brief dalliance with the Eagles in 2015, he remains out of football. Moffitt also had some off-field issues.
Durham ironically wound up spending the bulk of his career with Detroit. The wideout quickly washed out of Seattle and latched on with the Lions, and former Georgia roommate Matthew Stafford, in the summer of 2012. In two seasons in Detroit, Durham consistently disappointed. He caught fewer than 40% of the balls thrown his way and struggling to get open even with Calvin Johnson drawing all the excess coverage away from him. He spent one more year hanging on in Tennessee before the Titans realized he just wasn’t worth a roster spot.
Richard Sherman is the big one that got away. Of course it’s impossible to know if Mayhew would have selected the loquacious Stanford cornerback with the pick, but he definitely fit the profile of long and confident. Sherman has become one of the preeminent cover men and defensive playmakers in the NFL, helping spearhead the Legion of Boom secondary that made back-to-back Super Bowls, winning one. He has 26 career INTs and made the first-team All Pro squad after the 2012-14 seasons.
The rest of that deal is barely worth mentioning. Hogue barely made the Lions as a rookie, playing only on special teams. The outside linebacker from Syracuse once again saw sparing action in 2012 before being cut midseason. He couldn’t latch on with the Panthers, or the CFL, and has been out of football for years. Culbreath missed his rookie campaign with a blood pressure issue, then got arrested at a time when the team desperately needed a palatable example for a newfound stringency on personal conduct. Levingston never played an NFL down either, though he did linger for three seasons in the CFL.
Mayhew wasn’t done dealing with Seattle. In the sixth round, he traded Detroit’s pick to the Seahawks for defensive end Lawrence Jackson. LoJack picked up 7 sacks in two seasons for the Lions as a reserve defensive end. Most fans know him better for his blasts at Mayhew and the Lions organization after he left the team.
Seattle used that acquired pick on cornerback Byron Maxwell. He started slowly for the Seahawks but grew into a valuable member of the Legion of Boom. Maxwell cashed in to the tune of $63 million from the Eagles after the 2014 season. Hampered by a shoulder issue, he struggled in a lost season for all of Philadelphia and was subsequently traded to Miami. He and former Lion Ndamukong Suh take up a combined 13% of Miami’s 2016 salary cap, a number that goes up to over 18 percent in 2017, and that’s after both redid their deals to be more team-friendly.