Wild Card

Drew has played in three regular season and two preseason games in two years. Two injuries have severerly limited his practice time and game experience. He is not even close to your average 3rd year player in experience. He was healthy finally the last 8 games or so of last year and saw only very limited time on a team that was searching for options so hard that they signed a guy in Daunte who hadn’t played well in forever. And while the coaching staff wasn’t the best at evaluating talent I still think that is important that nobody trusted Stanton.

I have to admit, the only potential I saw while watching Stanton was the possibility of an injury.

All that said I would love for him to be the answer in house so we don’t have to waste a pick on a QB. I think he will be back and given a chance, and hopefully he spent all his time missed studying film and learning what to do, leaving him left with what to do.

I like Stanton as a project, but if I’m looking forward to next season, I’m keeping Culpepper. He has taken a lot of knocks for how he played last season, but we’re talking about a guy who hadn’t played any football in some time getting thrown under center five days after getting his playbook.

While I understand there was a reason for his extended layoff (sub-par play for an awful team while pushing himself too quickly after a career-threatening knee injury) Culpepper is a decent NFL starter with mobility and toughness… and he WANTS to play for us. Culpepper to Johnson, with a beefed-up offensive line, could remind us of Culpepper to Moss. We all know that CJ works harder than Moss ever did.

As for the rest of the quarterbacks, I think we keep Orlovsky as the back-up and then cut everyone else so we can sign someone off the scrap heap for next to nothing… a Gus Frerotte type.

First, the positives: I love Stanton’s arm strength and his mobility but lets be honest here. When given a chance to play he did little. Now the negatives: (1) For every touchdown he threw, he threw a pic just a short time later. (2) For every nice run he had, still he had others where he immediately pulled the ball down and ran even with receivers open down the field. (3) He had to call time outs because he didn’t have command and control of the offense. The rest of the team didn’t help him much but he clearly wasn’t ready to start.

I’ll go with the young, project QB label. Stanton has some tools but he needs to sit, learn Linehan’s offense and learn to be a passer first and runner second. His running ability is a great luxury to have but he can’t rely on that as his first option in the NFL like he did at times last year.

First off, I don’t think the Lions will resign Dan O., he has shown that the best he will be is 2nd string, and there are plenty of quality back-ups this year in free agency.

I also think that Kitna’s days are done in Detroit, and he will be released or traded. After he was benched and put on IR, he stopped showing up to games and told the media he was very unhappy with the situation. Even before he was benched, you could see his frustration with the team as he wasted time outs and argued with coaches every game.

As far as free agency goes, I think the best we could do is a quality back up, none of the higher-level players (Collins, Warner) would want to come here and I don’t see us spending a couple million on a qb that will retire in a year, when we have stop gap qb’s already on the roster.

The Lions have 2 realistic options. The first is to draft a qb this year if one proves to be a clear #1 pick and appears to be a safe pick after the combine. The other option is a little bit more complicated. The lions start Culpepper this year, as he (in my opinion) showed the most potential last year, because despite being given 5 days to learn plays, no training camp whatsoever and being off the field for almost a year, he showed a spark. He looked more competitive than any of the other qbs we had. He even looked like a true veteran leader, something Kitna never embraced. Even when he would get benched, he cheered on the other players and celebrated with them when they would score. He also is not as washed up or talentless as many would like to claim. When someone is as competitive as an NFL football player and has the talent, anything can happen (look at Warner, Collins this year). Anyways, you start Culpepper after a full/quality offseason and after rebuilding the oline and defense in the draft/free agency. You also have Stanton start his development, since it has been marred by poor coaching in the past. If you see him develop into a starting qb, you give him a shot next year to compete for a starting role, and either retain Culpepper(depending on performance), start Stanton, or draft a qb next year. But if Stanton still doesn’t look like a starter, you cut him, if Culpepper doesn’t look great, you either cut him or resign him as a backup(with a backups salary), and then you draft the qb we need.

Wow, that is probably alot easier to talk about in person than to write/read on a computer.

Anyways, here’s my problem with Stanton. For starters, he is injury prone. He blew his own chance to start/come in when Kitna got dropped when he broke his pinky. He blew the opportunity he got near the end of the season when he got that concussion. So everytime he takes a snap, we have to worry about him being hurt and out for a couple of weeks. If you look at all of the franchice qb’s pretty much ever, they have durability. Look at Brady, he gets hurt and people even doubt if he will ever start again. Injurys and qbs do not go together.

Now, many of you are saying, how can you champion Daunte while at the same time putting Drew down. He was injured, right. The difference is that one, Culpepper had established himself as a quality qb prior to getting hurt. I’m also not saying that Culpepper is our answer to the next ten years of football, I’m saying he’ll be the best option for the next 2-3 until we build a quality team and can afford the first round pick to be spent on a qb that can come in and be set-up to succeed with a strong o-line and a good defense that gives the offense a chance to score points and not always play from behind.

Gentleman let’s look at our choices here…

1st option Keep Culpepper, hope that him be reunited with his old O.C. helps him out and he can regains 1/2 of his old form. Why I think this won’t happen 1st his playing weight was probably around 285lbs, he’ll be 31 or 32 even though thats not that old, do you really want to build your team around a QB with his best day’s behind him. Lastly all his sucess came as a mobile QB and let’s face it that knee could be a time bomb.

2nd option keep Kitna, enough said

3rd option try to bring in Collins or Warner, I heard plenty of people talking about signing one of the two, WHY, both are at end of their career. Both are coming from teams with pretty good O-lines, so what makes you think their be able to stay off there backs here. Warner likes too throw the ball that’s what he is a gun slinger. Collins has history with our new HC but to me Collins is a game manager. An older version of Dan O. He won’t win alot of games for you neither will he lose them for you.

4th option draft a QB. I’ve heard this one alot too, my feeling if you don’t have an O-line to protect a franchise QB your wasting the pick I’ve never seen rookie QB do well behind shotty O-line and thats what we have right now. 2nd you can’t put that kind of pressure on a rookie QB to score 28 to 35 points a game because that’s how many of defence gives up. Their bound to go through growing pains and throw a couple bad picks, if our defence still sucks you can take those picks and turn them into 7 points real quick.

5th option, Drewslions is right Stanton played just as well as any of the other QB on the roster given his playing time. Culpepper looked rusty will it go I don’t know but I’d rather put the time into a younger QB, Did Stanton ever embarrass himself when he played, no. In preseason he looked pretty good before he got hurt. A QB is like a pitcher if you mess with their head and throwing menanics there going to lose it for a while. Now that Martz is gone and colleto gone maybe the OC won’t call him an embarrassment and work with the kid. Listen I’m not saying give him the job out right but why dont you resign Dan O for insurance and let the two battle it out. If they want these two QB to act as stop gaps before they find their franchise QB fine, then take this time and build your O-line and D-line your be surpised how much better your QB look when both side are playing good.

then Mayhew is dealing with a dead deck. I am fine with them giving him a shot and I would rather see him in there come September than Stafford but I am not expecting much. He is too brittle and was a poor decision maker in college. My gut tells me that Stanton will never truly get a shot in Detroit and will be tossed on the pile of other Millen busts. If he gets a shot I wish him the best but, again, my expectations will be very low.

Drew, great post.

I’ve said for quite a while that Culepper was the straw man brought in for Stanton to knock over. I thought at the time that Mayhew brought in Culpepper to be the guy that goes down with the ship, the one who suffers the slings and arrows of the boo birds, while Stanton remains an uknown quantity. If they’d just thrown Stanton in and he’d done poorly (as he probably would have, given how hard it was to look good for the Lions last year), the Lions would be almost forced to draft a QB. Now, however, Stanton is an unknown quantity, so if the Lions don’t draft a QB he’s still a ‘maybe’ as the QB of the future.

Moreover, if the organization is really high on Stanton, they might want him to “win” a traning camp compeition between him and “the veteran starter”. If “the veteran starter” is Culpepper, he’s going to be easier to beat out than Kitna or Orlovsky . . .

Peace
Ty