Maybe Bob Quinn isn’t the reason the Lions pass on Tua Tagovailoa
By Robert Jones
The Detroit Lions will most likely pass on Alabama quarterback Tua Tagovailoa in the draft, but maybe not necessarily all because of Bob Quinn.
Detroit Lions fans have a great debate raging; to pick or not to pick Tua Tagovailoa? That is the question. The answer won’t come until April 23rd when the NFL will conduct the first round of the draft. However, most of us believe that we already know the answer.
General manager Bob Quinn was beyond emphatic that the Lions have no interest in trading away their franchise quarterback Matthew Stafford. That would certainly count as a vote of confidence in Matthew as the Lions starting signal-caller for next season.
Couple that with the mandate that Quinn and head coach Matt Patricia have been given to win now and it would seem very unlikely that the Lions will be calling Tagovailoa’s name with the third pick in the draft.
Since the arrival of Bob Quinn and subsequently Matt Patricia two years later, they have done nothing but praise Stafford and made sure we are all aware that he is the Lions top player. The cornerstone of Detroit’s franchise, if you will.
Yet if any of the fans have been paying attention, they already know Stafford’s status in the Motor City. Despite an ever-changing roster that more often than not hasn’t been able to play defense or protect him or run the ball by any kind of positive measurement, Matthew Stafford has been charged with doing the ‘mission impossible’ of carrying this franchise with his right arm.
Not even the all-time greatest quarterbacks have been able to do their phenomenal feats without some help from the rest of the offense, and none of them have been able to win a championship without a defense that was at least reliably good.
But with the Lions who haven’t successfully built a championship team since 1957, it has been consistently assumed that Matthew is enough to carry this franchise on his own. It has also been the belief of all Stafford’s critics that the losing is his fault because he can’t turn poor players into great players.
I got news for everyone, no quarterback can perform that miracle. The great quarterbacks may make good players better, but they don’t make bad players better.