Too bad we never had both in their prime. Stafford was still young and learning when he had Calvin, and sometimes having Calvin slowed his growth and understanding of defenses. A lot of signs point to Stafford becoming a better overall QB once Calvin retired.
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More handsome too
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We’d have to ask Mrs. Pretzel what she thinks!?
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She’s had 46 kids with him…we know exactly what she thinks. LOL
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Of course the jury’s still out. Some positions need a couple years, and at minimum, 1 year. So far all we’ve seen is rookies and that’s nowhere near a fair test.
They say the journey is half the fun. I think it’s more than half.
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I think Suh.
The guy played so many snaps at such a high level. It’s a shame we robbed Peter to pay Paul so bad that he had an out in 2015.
Without Suh, we don’t come anywhere close to sniffing the playoffs. If we’d have not taken one of our worst picks since 2006 (Ebron), we’d have gotten Donald and that DL would have been historic. 12-13 wins in the regular season and relatively fresh legs in the playoffs. Imagine that rotation. Suh, Donald, Fairley, Mosley.
I thought Diggs was a pretty amazing pick, bang for the buck. Too bad Patricia ushered him out.
Penei Sewell could be a better pick than Suh, IMO, but I won’t grade this pick until Decker is out (age or FA) and he moves to LT. I’ve been wanting a blue chip LT since Lomas.
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I agree with this.
The offenses we had were not dominant. Ever. Pretty good in 2011, but not good enough to win a shootout with another team that had good offense bad defense. If you have a great QB, you put up points like GB does with Rodgers. Imagine Rodgers with Calvin Johnson as his primary receiver for 7 years. What do you think that looks like? A nightmare. Like being eaten alive, nightmare.
The Lions built offenses around Stafford’s arm. Not exactly Stafford’s fault, per se, but when you build an OL for pass pro, you get little backs to catch passes, you don’t hardly run the ball (look at the attempts over the years. Near the bottom if not THE bottom). Then formation wise, we were in shotgun/pistol a whole lot so that the QB had the advantage in the pass game to the detriment of the run game.
Stafford has had some accuracy and decision making issues. Not so much when clobbering bad teams, but against good defenses, it’s 3 and outs and picks. Even last year, 17 picks (4 of them pick 6). 2.8% INT rate is not all that amazing on a super bowl team (that only scored 460 points/27.5ppg in a 17 game season - 7th best offense).
Stafford’s best year for the Lions was 2011, 29.6 ppg. 2nd best was 2017 - 25.6ppg. Then all the rest below 25ppg. So many just mediocre offenses for it never to be his fault.
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I think it’s too early to call him a quality starter. Or even a starter for that matter. He wouldn’t have started on more than half of the teams in the league last year.
Yes he’s a starter for us because we have one of the worst DT rotations in the NFL.
I like his upside and he showed some flashes but he also had plenty of mistakes and was blown off the ball at times too.
Like Barnes the Jury is still out on him.
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I think calling Stafford or Johnson or Suh great draft picks is off. They are all great players, but there wasn’t much skill involved in drafting any of them.
I like Whitehead or Glasgow as great draft picks. I might throw Ragnow in there too since there were a lot of directions the team could have gone there.
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And Levi, and the entire defense really, the jury is still out. AG had them trying and playing hard last year, which was great, but we couldn’t stop the run at all, the fact that he was interviewing for head coaching jobs with the 29th worst defense in the NFL was kinda laughable IMO.
I think guys like Suh, Johnson and Stafford shouldn’t get the nod because the term “value” is thrown into it. If they wouldn’t have used that word they would qualify. That being said I don’t like the logic of “oh well anybody in our position would have taken those players. It was a no brainer!” Draft picks can always go a different direction. And I think years later people forget some of the debates that were happening leading up to the draft. Look at Calvin Johnson for instance. Sure he looks like a no brainer now. First, taking ANOTHER WR that high in the draft is something many teams wouldn’t have done. We had just went thru the media circus of drafting Charles Rogers, Roy Williams and Mike Williams. Roy was coming off of his BEST season as a pro (1,300 yards). Lucky for us it was a hard draft for Millen to screw up since players like Adrian Peterson and Joe Thomas were seen as the pick if it wasn’t Calvin. We could have also gone with Brady Quinn.
Everyone remembers the “safest pick in the draft” Aaron Curry vs Matt Stafford debates. But one thing that’s lost in history is the Matt Stafford vs Mark Sanchez debate. Sanchez was seen by some as having the higher upside. Crazy, right? Then there is Suh. The Rams were not smart enough to draft him, so there is at least one team that didn’t make the “no brainer” pick. But you also have to remember that it was debated that Suh wasn’t even the best DT in the draft. Gerald McCoy was seen as the higher upside player with a better pass rush…which is more valuable.
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DI ALIM MCNEILL , DETROIT LIONS
There is no obvious candidate for the second interior defender spot, but McNeill earns the nod as PFF’s second-highest graded rookie at the position with a 60.3 overall grade.
McNeill earned the second-highest PFF run-defense grade of any rookie interior defender to play at least 100 run-defense snaps, and he flashed some of the quickness that gave him intriguing pass-rush potential coming out of North Carolina State.
There was enough there to be excited about McNeill heading into the 2022 season.
Once again not saying future all pro here, just that he was solid for a rookie and his best play came in the last 4-6 weeks. I’m personally willing to say he is a solid starters for us.
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Yeah, I was here. I remember.
I guess taking these in turn:
2007: that was before my time at The Den (I think) but I recall being terrified the Raiders would leave Russell for the Lions. Once they took him I was fine. I wanted Thomas but Johnson was a great consolation prize. I don’t think All Day was really in the conversation.
2009: While we argued about the pick here, there was never really any doubt which direction the Lions were going in. Stafford was obviously the #1 pick. Man. Curry. Talk about an entire industry missing on a guy. Top ten that year was awful, awful at the time and awful in hindsight.
2010: I don’t remember much discussion between Suh and McCoy. I always though Suh was the guy. Even if my memory is faulty though, if the team had picked McCoy, as with Thomas or ADP, we would be having the same discussion today with those picks. Those players were all great.
*remember the small cult who wanted the Lions to take Josh Freeman?
Okung was part of the conversation, too.
And the year before, it wasn’t just Stafford v Curry, Eugene Monroe was in the mix.
That just reinforces your point… no-brainer might be an overstatement.
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This happens almost every year. Even with Manning some suggested Leaf was going to be better, although I doubt any NFL GMs would have gone that way. Andrew Luck might have been the most consensus of the consensus picks I can remember. Nobody had RGIII going before him that I can remember.
I think Suh was value. Look at the snap count. I swear it was like getting 1 1/2 DTs with huge motor. Dude was always out there and affecting plays. Look at what happened to the DL from 2014 to 2015 after losing those snaps.
That dude was worth it and then some. Him stomping Packers was just a bonus.
Totally agree. Thomas would have done so much more for the team. As I said in the above posts, consider the snap counts and direct effect of EVERY play, is the dominant LT. WRs are just not as valuable in my mind.
The team that picked Curry got rid of him sooner and won the SB, what, 5 years later?
Suh was suspended against the Saints in 2011 - But not for the Wild Card.
The stomping incident happened on Thanksgiving. We also played the Saints the next week after Turkey day.
all time? Not even that year.
A. Rodgers 45TD, 6 INT, 68.5% completion, 4643 yds.
M. Stafford, 41TD, 16 INT, 63.5% completion, 5038yds
However, the real light is shown when you also look at attempts (and TD% and INT%)
Rodgers 502 attempts (9% TD - holy crap, 9%; 1.2%INT) 10.5ay/a. 9.5 y/a
Stafford 663 attempts* (6.7%TD, 2.4% INT). 7.7 ay/a; 7.6 y/a
- this number is historical,though. 10th most pass attempts in a single season. Doesn’t hold a candle to the record, though, which is 727 set in 2012.
The devil is in the details, so probably no need to attack bias here, given that the facts speak for themselves (if you look at all the relevant ones)
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How can you ever argue against Calvin or Suh? Both were excellent picks. Stafford, too.
If we are looking deeper, though, one more good season and St. Brown has to be in the conversation due to the value.