Detroit Lions Weblog

The Duel Enigmas of Shaun “Big Baby” Rogers and Kalimba “The Ghost” Edwards

As the Lions season continues to unravel, two key figures in their demise have been taking a lot of shots in the media, and deservingly so. In both cases, in a nutshell, rests the problem Matt Millen has had as a talent evaluator. By all accounts, each possess the tools necessary to pursue a long, successful NFL career. Instead, each is on the verge of, or at the very least, being jettisoned by a Lions franchise that has desperately needed for them to produce, consistently.

In Rogers, surliness and bulging waistline aside, the Lions possess a rare talent who, in spite of his selfishness, has often been quite productive. Unfortunately, Rogers is prone to prolonged disappearances performance-wise. He is incredibly agile and quick for someone who is pushing 400 lbs. Instead of committing to become a slimmer, more streamlined version of himself during the off season, he appears to have taken some of Coach Rod Marinelli’s special treatment(i.e. allowing him a wide berth in the off season training program to recuperate from his surgeries) to meaning that he is above maintaining a solid playing condition. If he wants to revisit the career demise of Gilbert “The Gravedigger” Brown, he is right on track.

The sad fact is, Rogers is among the most gifted players in the entire NFL, as his dominating early season performance readily demonstrated. Instead, as the Lions season continues to fall apart, Rogers has had to suffer shots from Dallas Morning News Rick Gosselin (”He’s way too heavy right now. He’s shortchanging the Lions and himself”) and Don Banks on SI.com, who designated Rogers as his runner-up on the online “All Bust” team, which seems like more of an insult than ACTUALLY making the “All Bust” team. Rogers has come forward stating that his recent poor performance is the result of a “slump” not poor conditioning, which is among the saddest cases of denial I have ever seen.

Kalimba Edwards, or the “Ghost” as I like to call him, has been a topic of mine before. He is the prototypical baseball five tool talent whose promise and performance never can align themselves at the same time. As an off season pet project of Rod Marinelli’s, who was supposed to be some sort of defensive line guru, Edwards has been a resounding failure.

The Detroit Free Press’ Nicholas J. Cotsonika wrote an excellent article “What’s With Kalimba?” where he calls Edwards the Lions “most confounding” player. Lions Defensive Coordinator Joe Barry states it best in regards to Edwards. “There’s a lot of people out there that look the part, that are smart, that are athletic, that can run, that can do all those things. The bottom line, especially in a position that he plays (in reference to Edwards), where you put so much onus on winning the one-on-one, you’ve got to do that. You’ve got to, and there’s no hiding that.”

Edwards reminds me of former Tigers first basemen, Carlos Pena. Both are intelligent, introspective individuals of high character who possess tantalizing athletic abilities to go along with their respective smarts. I would not be surprised if Edwards, like his counterpart Pena, will, or would have(had he signed with the Browns), enjoyed a career renaissance upon leaving Detroit. How you consistently distill the untapped ability of players like Pena and Edwards remains one of the great mysteries of sports, as Matt Millen will attest.

In regards to Millen, he needs to develop an ability to see through the proverbial “bright and shiny” prospective talent and assess a more complete picture of individual performance. Aside from drafting wide receivers, Millen has consistently missed on players who have immense talent, whom many other teams would have passed on drafting for one reason or another. In his time as team president, Boss Bailey, Teddy Lehman, Edwards, Rogers, Shaun Cody, Charles Rogers, Mike Williams, and DE Jonathan Taylor, are among the designates to this group. All that is really left to wonder is, who will be selected next by Millen to fall unto this underachieving class of talents?