Brian Xanders to build new scouting system for Lions

One of the main reasons the Detroit Lions decided to hire Brian Xanders as a senior personnel executive is that he has an impressive scouting background. The Lions not only think that background will come in handy when they evaluate potential draft picks and free agents, but it will help them in simply establishing an internal scouting system. The Lions have already tabbed Xanders to create an in-house scouting system, as they currently do not have one, believe it or not.

Here's what Lions general manager Martin Mayhew told the team's official site about Xanders' first main assignment with the team:

"One big thing he's going to be working on right now is building a new scouting system," Mayhew said. "We've contracted that out in the past and bought product from other people and we're actually going to build our own system internally designed strictly for us that we can design and set up."

Given the struggles the Lions have had with scouting players in the past, I'm all for a change like this. According to the Lions, Xanders has experience from building a system like this in Atlanta in the 1990s, so this isn't something new for him. Not only will he serve as an extra set of eyes, but he will overhaul the way the Lions scout players, and that sounds like a very positive development.

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