Detroit Lions will draft a quarterback, just not who the fans want
By Robert Jones
Detroit Lions fans are understandably impatient with this franchise. Not many of them that celebrated that last championship in 1957 are still with us. And I don’t blame them because it’s been a long and brutal journey.
Yet despite that impatience, after all this time of being lost and clueless and quite frankly the national punchline to more jokes than we can count, don’t we want a team that is built right? Don’t we want a team that is all about winning? I hear friends whine about this team not being exciting or not getting any national love.
Well, guess what? That’s what happens when you’re inept for 60 years.
But the path to championships isn’t paved by flashy moves. It’s paved with a solidly structured roster and good coaching.
The Lions had one of the flashiest players in NFL history, Barry Sanders, but never won a championship because of the cast they surrounded him with. They could never find an upper tier quarterback to make the offense unstoppable and the defense always folded in the end.
Like any diehard Lions fan that was able to witness Barry at work, I cherish those memories of his superhuman performances, but I also feel like Barry, the fans and myself were cheated because this franchise could not get the pieces around him right.
So when I hear Matt Patricia talking about how important laying the foundation of the roster is because that’s not only about building a winner but also building a window of opportunity to become real contenders over a period of time and not just a one year ‘hope we catch lightning in a bottle’ juggernaut that can’t sustain that level of play, I completely agree with that philosophy.
Now admittedly the next part is the problem all of his successors have had difficulty with; actually making it come true.
So as we approach the draft, we will once again get to see what Patricia and Bob Quinn can accomplish. Last year they hauled in one of the most productive draft classes in the league. Another class that is similarly productive should very much put them in the playoff hunt.
But, no one should expect that class to be headed by a quarterback in the first round.