"Yeah, I'd take Leigh Bodden over a fifth-round pick," Lewis said earlier this week at the NFL owners' meetings in Palm Beach, Fla. "I think he's one of the best corners in the NFL."

"I know he's a competitive player against us and one of the better corners we face week-in and week-out," said Lewis, whose Bengals faced Bodden twice a season in the AFC North. "He's a big guy. He's talented. He plays with great leverage. He can run. He plays square at the line. He doesn't play scared. He's very competitive."

The past two years, the Lions crammed in as many as seven or eight visits a day. This year, they started earlier so they could limit the visits to two or three a day and take their time.

"I felt, the first two years, there were so many in a day, I didn't get a good feel for these guys," Marinelli said. "When you bring in seven or eight a day, I don't do as good a job for myself."

The Lions hope to limit their misses by taking players they really like, even if others don't rate the player as high as the pick.

"By that I mean, this is your job," Kitna said. "This is not, you come to work, you get here five minutes before you're supposed to be here and you leave two minutes after they let you go. That's not how this profession works. It's just not."

"You can't have the veteran that everybody looks up to in your meeting asleep," Kitna said. "You can't have that. If that's the case, then what's the young guy learning? That that's OK. That's what he's learning. I think we're heading in the right direction in terms of having those kind of people in this building."

After talking to people in and around the organization, the main reason the Detroit Lions released running back Kevin Jones is because of his past injury history and his uncertain short-term future.

Now here's a surprise: Since Matt Millen took over as team president in 2001, the Lions are batting .286 on their first- and second-round draft choices. (I don't include the 2007 draft; it's too early to tell on the yield from last year's first two rounds: Calvin Johnson, Drew Stanton, Ikaika Alama-Francis and Gerald Alexander.) But with the whacking last week of 2002 second-rounder Kalimba Edwards and 2004 first-rounder Kevin Jones, the black marks against the Detroit drafts just keep rising.

When you draft a player in the first or second round, you're counting on him becoming an above-average player for your team. That's my line of demarcation. Of the 14 players picked by Millen in the first two rounds of the six drafts between 2001 and 2006, I count four players being above-average NFL starters for the Lions on their depth chart this morning: tackle Jeff Backus, center Dominic Raiola, wide receiver Roy Williams and linebacker Ernie Sims.