Notes: Matthew Stafford is taking his leadership to a new level in 2017

• MMQB’s Albert Breer made an interesting observation in his Tuesday column. It appears the Detroit Lions have entrusted Matthew Stafford to teach the offense to his players. Here’s a snippet:

During the ’16 season, the coordinator and quarterback held Tuesday game-planning sessions (like Manning used to) designed to give the triggerman ownership of the plan for Sunday. And now, as I understand it, the coaches are actually teaching the offense through Stafford. What does that mean? Stafford gets coached, and he coaches his teammates through that coaching, which would seem to be that process coming full-circle.

This shows a tremendous amount of trust the Lions coaches have in Stafford.

• The Lions seemingly relied heavily upon rookies in 2016, but relatively speaking, it was only a little more than the league average (13th):

• Former Lions tight end Joseph Fauria spoke about his time in Detroit with SiriusXM hosts Alex Marvez and former Lion Geoff Schwartz. Apparently, Jim Schwartz, Jim Caldwell and Lions management all weren’t too pleased with his dancing antics—but Calvin Johnson was.

• Let’s hope Aaron Rodgers is counting in dog years:

• Get healthy soon, Theo Riddick:

• Chris Burke of Sports Illustrated re-graded the 2014 NFL Draft. The Detroit Lions, led by the pick of Eric Ebron, managed just a “C” grade.

• TJ Lang, Graham Glasgow and Travis Swanson all joined the hilarious “Pardon My Take” podcast last week. Here’s a taste of what happened.