Coming into the 2018 season, there were plenty of Detroit Lions fans hopeful that a handful of players would take a big jump in the upcoming year. In some cases, we did see a bit of a jump. A’Shawn Robinson finally looks comfortable in a Lions defense and he’s helped turned around Detroit’s run defense into one of the better units in the NFL. Kenny Golladay appears on his way to become the team’s No. 1 receiver.
However, the list is much longer for players that underwhelmed so far this season. Teez Tabor, Michael Roberts and Jarrad Davis probably top the list. There’s also Luke Willson, TJ Jones, and Jalen Reeves-Maybin.
While the careers of some of these young players are far from over, their lack of progress in 2018 is certainly concerning. So today’s Question of the Day is:
Which disappointing Lions player are you still hopeful for in the future?
My answer: I still have a little hope for Michael Roberts. Granted, my expectations for him have severely dropped from the beginning of the year, but tight end is one of the positions that has the toughest transitions from NCAA to the NFL. Roberts has had to deal with injuries this entire year, and while his performance has been hugely disappointing when he was healthy, too, I’m willing to sit on one more year with Roberts.
At this point, I think the best we can hope for is a guy that could be a red-zone threat, and hopefully learns to adequately block in certain scenarios. It’s easy to look back at that Dolphins game in which he hauled in two touchdowns and 48 yards and think that could be his ceiling every week, but that’s probably a little unrealistic considering all the evidence to the contrary.
Still, I think he could manage to be an average, or even good, No. 2 tight end in the future.
Your turn.