Quarterback possibilities and did the running game really get better?

Assume for a moment that we will not be taking a quarterback with the first overall pick.

On board at the moment we have Orlovsky, Kitna, Culepepper, and Stanton. Kitna has all but been released so I think that we can realistically rule him out of the picture leaving us with Culepepper, Orlovsky and Stanton. In all reality I belive that you're looking at Daunte as being the starter for the beginning run of the 2009 season. I do not however see him as being healthy for that long. Which will eventually lead into Orlovsky starting. I don't think with the players we have in place right now that Orlovsky could really thrive or be a difference maker in the game, and when the team finds out that Culepepper's injury is season ending they're going to need to make a play at a FA QB to fill that 3rd spot. I didn't think Mayhew was the type of person to shake things up, but he did that when he went out and signed Culepepper late last season. Drew Stanton seeing some playing time I think is a real distant possibility.

I'm not going to lie, I'm one of those people that's on the Drew Stanton bandwagon. Grew up in Michigan, played very well at MSU and didn't make any great big huge mistakes when he did see playing time last year. Like say for instance running out of the back of the endzone, or coming out of retirement. I do not however think he has the potential to be the QB of the future. He's not the next coming of John Elway but I do strongly believe he is the teams best chance at winning some games this year. As mentioned previously on this site he did just as well as Orlovsky under center and didn't have the benefit of receiving all of those snaps that a starter does during the week that Orlovsky did.

Now lets rebuttle my initiall assumption. Lets say we do draft Matt Stafford what is the best way to go about his learning curve? Do you throw him to the wolves and hope that he can build some type of chemistry with Johnson early? Or do you allow him to mature on the sidelines while learning the system? In the recent years I can only think of a few first round QB picks that have panned out to be worth a crap: Eli Manning, Ben Rothlesberger, Phillip Rivers, Carson Palmer and now Matt Ryan. With the exception of Matt Ryan all of those QB's were drafted by a team that already had a lot of key components in place. Especially Big Ben and Eli. 5 QB's in the last few years worth a crap 3 of them taken in the same draft. Also on that list of 1st round picks Michael Vick, Patrick Ramsey, Joey Harrington, David Carr, Kyle Boller, Rex Grossman, Byron Leftwich, JP Losman, Jason Campbell, JaMarcus Russel, Brady Quinn and Alex Smith. If you go all the way back to 1990 you'll see maybe 3-4 more quarterbacks that really panned out to be anything taken in the first round. Manning, McNabb, McNair and Bledsooe.

Honestly with the quarterback being the most important piece of the offense I think we need the tools at hand to set that QB up for success before we start picking one at the first overall pick. We could argue that Calvin Johnson and Kevin Smith are in fact weapons and I can't really argue that but I will dispute the running game being good enough to lean on while that QB learns the NFL ropes.

We're all given the positives of how the running game "pieced together" towards the end of last season. Smith's YPC went up and so did his YPG. I say the numbers are slightly misleading. I say look at when he improved. Late in the season when he won back the starting job, when more teams, playoff contending teams, realized that they don't need to put forth much effort to beat the Lions. So the point that's not in the numbers is that those YPC and  YPG could have been "boosted" so to speak by the fact that the Lions were playing 2nd team defenses and not looking at dominant starters like they would if they were a viable threat week in and week out. Schwartz and Mayhew need to realize that almost EVERY aspect of this team is essentially broken with the exception of Calvin Johnson, and the way to make the biggest impact right away is by improving the lines. Let's hope they see that come draft day.