He is not even the highest paid player in the NFL, that overpaid shit is old and overused. Stafford is now like 13th-hight paid. I heard Jerry Jones is handing Elliot 50 Million now…
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Depends on what standard you’re using.
I tend to look at the percentage of the cap. This year, Stafford is hitting us for 15.7% of the cap.
I looked. I couldn’t find one player who gets more than that in 2019. Cousins is the closest…
If you pay a QB that much of the cap, then it sounds strange to me to then hear complaints about not having a decent supporting cast. Perhaps the money has something to do with lack of supporting cast?
I’m not the biggest Stafford fan. My reasoning is simple: His fundamentals breaks down, and causing him to overthrow, causing interceptions in critical times. He isn’t very good in the first quarter vs the fourth. He’s had the best WR in the game for most of his career. Nate Burleson was even the top WR FA when he came to Detroit. Going back to college a UGA, he had the best WR (AJ Green) and RB (Knowshon Mareno) and still went 13-3. He just can never get over the hump that’ll justify his #1 overall draft status. In a nutshell: He doesn’t or hasn’t made anyone better. Even with his supreme gifts.
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I felt Kitna was an overachiever. I have good feelings for overachievers. I felt the same way about Batch. Dude was very smart with the ball. 2 good streaks as a rookie with no INTs. Too bad about the knee, I think he could have been pretty good if given the time to develop. Of course, Millen had it in for him and gave us Joanie… What a nightmare that decade was.
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Harrington was AWFUL.
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I called him “noodle arm” and the duck fan transplants all over MLive Forum (RIP Killer) went berzerk. I was pretty much alone doubting Joey in those days. TNutzz had my back, and maybe 2 or 3 others, but man it was nuts the love for that guy.
He got all the love but even on his college team, he was carried by Morris and Smith and Belotti was a run first coach. Joey was a Tedford QB…
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you can point to one or two things in Stafford’s timeline here as our QB but you left out:
A. Stafford walked onto a team that wasn’t winning before…at all.
B. Could not Run for anything.
C. Our defense HAS sucked each and ever season over ten years except for maybe 2.
D. We were constantly changing Coaches, GM’s, OC’s,DC’s, Schemes, Game-plans , -line players, meaning Matt has never known a set and typical way of play since he got here…unlike Tom Brady who had Bill B for 90% of his career. The Lions’ staff and front office never has had their shit together…until maybe here in 2019.
E. You say Stafford had Calvin Johnson part of his career big damn deal ! MOST QB’s have one or more WR’s, TE’s , RB’s they can use at any time . Stafford had a WR here once and a back …that one time in such and such a season that was any good. yeah CJ WAS around for Matt a little while , but were just now getting back to having an able group of receivers…as in :WR’s , RB’s , TE’s…that Stafford has EVER had. IF he had these weapons in 2009 forward and better…nobody would be bitching constantly about Stafford . BUT that sure as hell Matt has had some dang nice good players on the team here and there…but rarely for long or together all at the same time. that has changed here in 2019… but you don’t have to look hard to know what a sad and pathetic franchise the Lions had been over the last ten seasons and before we ever had Stafford.
2011 is the blue print for what would have made Stafford a great QB. He’s good but not great. Yes the best ever in a Lions uniform no doubt, but had a chance to be great. What I believe happened and what prevented Stafford’s greatness is the decline in level of play with everyone around him not named Calvin Johnson. In 2011 you had a good supporting cast around both Matt and Calvin with emerging young players like Jahvid Best, Titus Young and Brandon Pettigrew. Then Tony Scheffler was a huge help. But at some point during the 2011 and the start of the 2012 season all of these guys declined for one reason or another. And that is what happened to Matt’s development into greatness IMO.
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One of the biggest issues with Jon Kitna was timing. He threw 42 interceptions over a 2 year span. But in addition to that being alot of picks, the timing of those picks also sucked. Its like he’d wait until the worst possible moment to throw a pick or fumble…then BOOM…it would happen. When the game was tight and plays had to be made towards the end, you knew deep down in your stomach that he was about to do something stupid.
As far as “units,” I’m not sure where you were going with that one. But I would rather have the receivers from the 2007 team.
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Martz’s system is pretty INT friendly. Even Kurt Warner threw a bunch of picks with STL. He also threw a bunch of TDs, but he also had a pretty amazing set of players. Put Stafford in the same system and we’d see just as many.
I had that pit of my stomach feeling about Mitchell, but not Kitna. Of course by 2006 I had been beaten into submission
We were 7-9 in 2007 and there are those who argued that we tanked on purpose in 2008.
Schwartz and Linehan were here for his first 5 years. When they all got cleaned out and the next regime was brought in to “fix Stafford”. Then when Lombardi couldn’t make him the next Brees, they had JBC become Linehan lite. The turnover is arguably due to the inability to use Stafford correctly. Maybe Brady got a consistent scheme because the first one they put him in, he was able to master? If Stafford had mastered Linehan’s system (instead of choking the last 4 games of 2013) Schwartz would still be here. I can certainly see Schwartz taking Donald instead of Ebron, even trading up if necessary. Had we done that, I think we win the division and a playoff game and a path the big game. Instead, Stafford needed another weapon, so they got Ebron, who turned out to have a bigger mouth than ability.
Defense was one of the best we’ve had in Lions history in 2014. And it wasn’t bad in 2013. However, Stafford choked in 2013 and the offense barely mustered 321 points in 2014. That’s less than we put up on 2007, by the way.
It is a big deal. How do you have Calvin Johnson and not even win one playoff game? One reason: You ignore him in single coverage by a smurf he’d been flogging all day long (pre-snap) on 3rd and one and go with the long developing play to the TE.
Calvin was so demoralized that he quit, citing lack of confidence in the team. Stafford, being the QB, was not listed in his “I’d like to play for” when asked.
Blaming the WRs is like a golfer blaming the putter.
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Jahvid didn’t do that much, really. 390yds rushing? Kevin Smith had a better ypc that year and 350 yds. (He was still here in 2012, but we rolled with Joique and LeShoure. I wanted to keep going with K. Smith and Joique, but we needed an upgrade to what worked…?) We had RBBC in 2011. 1500yds rushing isn’t exactly awesome. 356 attempts. It was a gunslinger’s delight. 663 pass attempts. QB looks good and we rack up a lot of points and passing yards, but then we met a better offense with a better QB in the first round and we were out. All offense, no defense. (defense was on the rise, but needed a lot of rebuilding)
Titus was furious at Stafford. When he went nuts, he started poaching routes on the field saying “that’s the only way I get looked at”. Somehow that bothers me. Tells me the 3rd read is open but Stafford isn’t seeing it because he’s supremely confident he can fit the ball in tight windows of his first read. I still think this is an issue, actually.
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Titus Young’s problems had zero to do with Stafford. That’s a total mental issue that I don’t think we need to use as a means to hold Stafford accountable for overall team decline. That said, that 390 yds was not in 16 games. It was in a mere 6 games. And please let’s not minimize Best’s big play ability, which he displayed that on many occasions in his very short career. My point was had Best had the opportunity he would have been a very important part of that offense and he would have been an explosive option for Stafford in addition to Calvin and the others had the elevated themselves instead of the decline.
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because your have morons running the team…always has been a 3-ring circus until we got Quinn & Patricia. Then you have injuries, refs screwing up calls , we had no running game to be proud of, a hit and miss defense, Stafford himself isn’t elite or ‘great’ and makes mistakes as well, and we were always flip flopping game plans and schemes and leaders, then we went two full season leading the league in dropped footballs, PLUS Stafford was getting hammered behind the O-line and injured himself…little things kill !
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Little things like poor placement and lack of touch (which I believe contributes to the drops).
And if you have an non-elite QB, then you have to not pay him top dollar like he is or you can’t put the guys around him as easily. You have to basically draft without mistake and find a lot of unpolished gems in FA and polish them. In essence, you have to be error free in building a supporting cast for an error prone QB. I don’t like the strategy…
You’re right, Mayhew was a clown. He spent 35% of the cap on 3 players: Stafford, Suh and Calvin. You can’t be that top heavy and field a balanced team. Now both Suh and Calvin are gone, but Stafford alone is still hogging 15.7% of the cap and the same next year.
Quinn is fixing that.
We had no run game because we intentionally build a team around a passer. All the parts. Look at the makeup of the teams. Petite backs that had good hands. Great for the open field, so we passed to them (at one point 25%+ of the passes were to backs behind the LOS). Those counted as “pass” yards and that hurt the run game. Not attempting enough runs also hurt the run game. Also being in shotgun (2017 we were in shotgun 84% of the time) made for a lot of rushing attempts from that formation. That also, reduces the effectiveness of the runner. It made sense to throw to them, but the way they acquired players shows it was intentionally built that way. Caldwell said something I will always remember. When asked about the run game and needing balance: “We have an arm and we’re going to use it”. Seduced by the big arm caused the imbalance, not the lack of run game. It was self induced.
This is why it kind of bothers me that all the things we did to help the pass game, hurt the run game. Now all of a sudden it’s an excuse as to why the pass game sucked? How good does the pass game look if we don’t provide all those advantages? Probably a lot worse. Then the complaint would be “well, maybe if you let the guy throw the ball more…” No?
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Not saying they were. Mental health is mental health. But crazy people say things without filter and if he perceived not getting looked at, maybe it was true? Or even partially true?
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When you have mental health issues things may seem true to you but in reality they may not be true at all. I don’t really care to speculate on it other than to say that Titus Young wasted promising career. I mean I have seen better WR’s make a fuss about not getting looked at. Michael Irvin in the playoff game against the Lions. Keyshawn Johnson wrote a book about it “Throw me the damn ball.” Dez Bryant and Antonio Brown. Doesn’t shed a bad light on the QB in either of those respective cases.
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That’s true even if you don’t have mental health issues…
I’m not sure you can blame him for wasting his career.
I’m not saying he was 100% right. But he didn’t complain, he just did it and explained why afterwards. It’s different than saying “Throw me the ball”. It’s saying “dude isn’t even looking at me because I’m not primary”.
Then Pettigrew goes from plenty of targets to 15 targets. Did other players get priority? It wasn’t for lack of snaps. I had that looked up. How does that happen? And if he’s no longer trusted, then why go to him on that play in Dallas? Super secret sleeper cell weapon?
You go to him because he’s open. Yeah his targets may have reduced, I didn’t look it up, but if so my guess is that because he is still on the team you throw to him if he has one-on-one coverage or if he is open. Problem with Pettigrew is that he dropped a lot of passes…passes that were straight in his hands
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Dude got 100+ targets a year for 3 years, then 63, then 15 and 15 his last 2 years. Why keep the guy for another year if you’re not going to target him?
Pettigrew had better target/catch ratios than CJ.
2012 Lions. Pettigrew 769 snaps (63% of the snaps), 102 targets
2014 Lions. Pettigrew got 587 snaps. - 53% of the total snaps. (142 more snaps than the big mouth bad hands rookie Ebron). 15 targets. Ebron got 47 targets.
2015 Lions. Pettigrew with 285 snaps (26% of the total snaps) 15 targets.
Does that not strike you as kind of odd?
Pettigrew was not open on that play. His defender was so all over him that Pettigrew was able to grab a fist full of facemask.
I bet if we watched film 2014-2015 we’d see him either open or single covered. That’s my concern. Perhaps he was open, but he wasn’t the primary so he didn’t get the ball. He was the primary back when Linehan was in charge… But Lombardi liked the Jimmy Graham types…