Detroit Lions are still missing one of the biggest needs for success

The Detroit Lions have addressed many needs in free agency, but there is one very big need they will have difficulty winning without.

The groundwork for the Detroit Lions‘ success or failure this upcoming season is being laid right now. Like every other NFL team, free agency and the draft are building blocks. Get them right and generally, success follows. Get them wrong and you have the history of the Lions.

General manager Bob Quinn and head coach Matt Patricia are on the hot seat. They have been given the mandate to win or else advance to the unemployment line. So their offseason success is more critical than ever. At least for them.

Free agency and the draft are always a gamble. Finding athletes that come from a different system and being able to correctly project how they will perform in the system they will be asked to play in isn’t easy.

Sometimes even when a general manager finds the right fit they still end up being wrong because the player they have acquired can’t stay healthy or just doesn’t possess the intangibles, whether it be instincts, intelligence or perhaps just heart, to perform as expected.

Good coaches do play an integral role in building a winner, but players win games. Even the greatest coaches in NFL history would have failed if they didn’t have players that could execute their system and game plans.

That means the only thing more important than good players is a general manager and scouting staff that are really good at their jobs. Because finding impact players isn’t as easy as it seems.

Even the best general managers have been wrong occasionally. However, they are right more often than they are wrong and find players that fit their teams’ system. They find players that excel at what their team does and the result is that the team wins and will often contend for a title. Occasionally even winning it all. Something every Lions fan everywhere is desperate to see happen in the Motor City.