FanPost

TRADE MAYHEW, TRADE


In some of my responses to recent posting, I have suggested that the Lions trade some current talent's in order to stock pile draft choices. We know that Martin Mayhew has been aggressive in Free Agent acquisition, but now it't time for him to work a little bit more of his trade magic in the way of Cliff Avril. I view Cliff Avril as the following: a good pass rusher (11 sacks), in a very good scheme for pass rushers (wide 9), but with limited run stopping ability. In my mind this makes him a good, but not great talent. Further, if we do keep ol' Cliffy, it will be at a high cap expense, which means we if we do sign him it will be for a 1 year deal, and he will probably be gone in free agency next year.

Complicating things a bit more is the wide 9 defensive scheme the lions run. While Cliff gets blamed for not being a run oriented DE, the wide 9 does not help him much. The run stopper in the wide 9 is the OLB, and the problem the lions have with the run is that they do not have exceptional talent with their OLB's this coupled with Cliff's deficiencies really have hurt our defense against the run.

Further rounding out the Lions problems are they have an ageing O=Line, a very "thin" D Secondary, a need for depth at RB, and a need for a speed receiver (someone to eventually replace Burrelson). To me the best way to fill these deficiencies to start to bundle trades.

The difference in this years draft over the last couple of years is the Lions can make do with their stating lineup as is . They have enough"A" players in place to now compete. This year what they need to do is stack pile "B+" talent, and the best way I can see us doing that is to trade.

By now you probably have figured I would like to trade Avril. i think we can honestly get a high 2nd and 3rd round draft choice for him. If he would go, we have Young, VBG, Jacson and Everett at DE. Even though I think by playing a combination of these DE would be good enough for this year, I would agree we would probably need acquire another run stopping DE to complement willlie Young. So on the 2nd round we could get our DE (Branch, Jones, Curry or Crick) and a run oriented OLB (Brown, David or Lewis). In the third, we could pick up our OL (probably a G ....Salato, Brooks or Brown or Center....Jones Brewster or Monk). Additionally, we could probably get Keshawn Martin or like receiver in the 3rd. This would leave the Lions with 5 additional picks to gain additional special teams depth.

My draft dream.....Your thoughts


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