Detroit Lions Weblog

Jim Schwartz Sums It All Up Best: “Are we where we need to be personnel-wise? No,”

Well, the Lions lost their 17th-straight road game in Minneapolis on Sunday, are you surprised? Unfortunately, the game got away from the Lions during the second half. If anything, the stark gulf that divides the weak Lions personnel from nearly all other highly-functioning NFL franchises, was in full view today.

Jim Schwartz, who regularly uses verbiage redolent of the school of coaches who talk without revealing much of anything, was particularly candid today:

“Are we where we need to be personnel-wise? No,” coach Jim Schwartz acknowledged. “But we have NFL players. We’ve gotta find a way to get that done. They have to make the plays that come to ‘em.”

That is what I find scary. Nothing has changed…Nothing. A large part of that fact falls upon Matt Millen’s shoulders. That being said, Millen is gone now, and I am starting to see familiar signs of the Lions returning to their past, truly awful form. That doesn’t speak well of Schwartz and his staff, for whom it is incumbent to find the means to utilize the strengths of the Lions current personnel, and conceal it’s many weaknesses.

Another thing that became clear was, according to Schwartz, that the Lions were severely remiss by not addressing their offensive line in the recent draft. Their prized franchise QB, whom they have made very rich, was left exposed to the Vikings defense all day. Stafford was sacked only three times, but he clearly left Minnesota pummeled, after being hit 13 TIMES.

“When we’re getting hit on three-step drops, that’s a problem,” Schwartz said.

I realize that the Lions decided to draft for their future in 2009, with the intention of taking the best player available, according to their draft board, but tell me, does exposing Stafford to 13 hits make any sense? Was the Lions personnel situation on their offensive line critical enough that they could be accused of being negligent for not addressing their major issues there? I think so. I used to be of the opinion that Jon Kitna was the toughest S.O.B. who ever put on a Lions jersey, but at this rate, it looks like Stafford could give him a run for his money.

All I know is, if the Lions don’t address their offensive and defensive line during the upcoming 2010 draft, then it is clear, paraphrasing ex-ESPN analyst Sean Salisbury from a year or so ago, when he was asked about the Lions: “They don’t get it, and they are never going to get it!

The Lions defense allowed five 40+ yard plays, and 10 plays of 20 yards or more, which is completely unacceptable.

“Most of our plays were either a missed assignment or a missed tackle,” Schwartz said. “I mean, their quarterback just throws the ball up against Cover-2 and they complete a 60-yard pass down the field. That’s on us. That’s on us as players. We need to make plays.”

The maddeningly high level of broken coverages and fundamental errors, like Schwartz refers to when he discusses the Vikings beating the Lions safeties deep against a Cover-2, a defense that used to be the teams base defensive set, is absolutely uncalled for.

The high injury total tallied by the Lions defense today seems to indicate something that many Lions fans are becoming suspicious of, this team is starting to quit, and their undermanned defensive personnel is unsure that it really wants to be on the field for the repeated beatdowns that they are likely to continue to receive across the next seven weeks, as they are routinely embarassed by their opponents.

Any illusions that this team is actually qualitatively different from those that have failed so miserably during recent seasons, will be completely washed away if the Lions lose next week against the equally lowly Browns, whom I believe stand a fair chance of beating the Lions on the road, after a short week of preparation (The Browns play in the Monday night game). At this point, like I have said so many times before, it appears to be business as usual in Allen Park, for better or for worse.