How much do you think Patricia and the

The War Room Detroit Lions — The Den
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But that’s my point.

I’d rather have great run game and great defense than the greatest show on turf. (which doesn’t happen without Faulk, who was a pretty good runner)

We could have had a historical defense in 2014, but we needed weapons for Stafford, so we ran to the lectern to take freaking Ebron instead of Donald (nope, too short)

The DL without Donald took us to the playoffs and 11 wins. With Donald, we win 13, the division and homefield advantage in kind of a weak year for the NFC.

As far as a “run game”. That’s also Stafford’s fault. We put together a team to ride his arm. We drafted pass blocking OL. We drafted/hired petite backs that were great for yac, but not particularly suited to traditional rushing. Short passes took the place of runs. We were in shotgun/pistol almost all the time (which helps the QB and hurts “run” game). Without that strategy, Stafford would not be way up there in stats (over 50% of his yards were yacs and a lot to backs) I’ve taken the yacs from the backs (only behind the LOS receptions) and added to to the “rush” column, and all of a sudden we’re middle of the pack in attempts and yards, instead of being dead last in both.

Stafford’s execution was only part of the problem. Creating the offense that depended too much on him was another. Paying him like he is elite and who can carry a team on his shoulders when he wasn’t/isn’t was unreasonable. And curse Mayhew for thinking it would work. Caldwell/Lombardi tried to make him into Brees, but Brees is crazy accurate and has touch to his passes so that didn’t work.

I’d rather build around the run with a very strong OL (which Quinn is trying to do, IMO). Then get a bigger back (Blount, Johnson, even Zenner, who we should have been running before Abdullah, dang). Then we could win playoff games with even a guy like Foles. And then build the defense like it was in 2014.

Hey, but that’s just my 2 cents.

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I hear what your saying, but I don’t think we have had the people in place to build a team. We can blame Stafford all we want but the Lions have been a whole lot better with him than they were without him. I mean there’s a reason we had the #1 pick in the draft. If Quinn can continue to build this team, and I think they did some great things on defense, with solid drafts and FA. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the luons move on from Stafford if they think he’s the problem.

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Dude, we DID build a team. We built the team to feature Stafford. We can go through every pick, every FA and I can show you how that offense was intended to be tailored to him.

We were better in the 90’s. 6 playoff appearances with one win in 9 seasons. And our QBs were Kramer, Peete and Mitchell.

With Stafford, we had one good year on offense. 2011. And we were stacked on offense that year.

The one year we had a great defense (2014), offense laid an egg. 321 points. We scored more points in 2007 with Kitna than in 2014 with Stafford. And do you remember who the OL was then? The receivers? (Roy, Mcdonald, Furrey, CJ as a rookie…) RB? K. Jones (until he got hurt) and TJ Duckett? Come on, now. I can’t even remember who played TE. Fitzsimmons?

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Dude in the 90’s we had Barry, Moore, perriman, Morton, Slone and that’s just on offense. We haven’t had any where near that kind of talent on offense in a long long time. Reggie Bush has been our best back in the Stafford are. And yea they tried to surround Stafford with talent but I really didn’t see much of it work out. Mayhew put together one he’ll of a dline in 2014, but other than that this team hasn’t really been that talented. What Quinn and Patricia have done on defense this year has been far more impressive than anything I’ve seen from the Lions in a long time.

Furry would be the second best WR on this team right now lol. I just don’t see the talent on offense you are talking about.

And i never understood why we didn’t stick with Kramer. Always liked him and he put up some good numbers with the Bears.

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Hands of stone Sloan?

In 91 it was Perriman, Clark and Farr. Moore was on the team, but he wasn’t Moore yet. Morton was a rookie in 94… Sloan rookie in 95. It’s not like it was them together the whole time.

Furrey would not be #2 at the start of the season. He’d be #4. Although maybe TJ Jones gets the #4 job over him…

Losing Kramer was a total mistake.

Mayhew’s teams didn’t look talented because he blew his wad on 3 players. How can you build a team when you rob Peter to pay Paul and then dump 35% of the cap into 3 players (Suh, Stafford and CJ)?

It was the emphasis on the skill position players that hurt us.

The unsung heros of the 90’s was the OL. The OL made the receivers look better than they were. Put Morton on this team and he’s no better than Tate, probably worse. Perriman (5’9", 180), too. Moore 6’4" 210)is great, but he’s not CJ 6’5" 240). CJ is way sicker.

Mitchell had better touch than Stafford. Mitchell, however, choked in big time situations. Not sure Stafford chokes, not with all the comebacks, but he certainly hasn’t blown apart great defenses, at least not to my memory…

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Now, show me how many of them played more than 20 games. Megatron. And he was playing injured, as was Stafford, half the time.
Who was the #2 receiver before Tate? Chris Durham ring a bell? That’s who was out there half the time! Look it up. Oh, Titus (fuckmyteamruntheroute I want) Young?
Who was the RB? The off-injured Bush? Bell? The always injured Best. Oooo! LeShour? What’s he doing these? Starting with Best in flag football?
Meanwhile, our QB has been getting his ass handed to him game after game, year after year.
Stafford hasn’t earned his contract?
Get outta my face with that crap!

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Holy crap! I went looking for “most sacked QB’s”, thinking Matt would be at the top of the list. He’s #36, and you wouldn’t believe the names in front of him!
Farve (of course),.Brady. Rodgers?

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No. He hasn’t. No QB is worth what they’re paying Stafford. His cut of the cap is a competitive disadvantage.

#2 receiver?

2009 who cares, dude was on pace to set an INT record

2010 - who cares. Dude threw fewer than 100 passes

2011 - Burleson (110 targets), Pettigrew for 126. CJ in his prime, 158 targets. Also Scheffler when he was still good and Titus Young before he went nutters. RB - Best, Morris, Smith, who accounted for 75 catches that year.

2012 - CJ, Pettigrew - remember we drafted Pettigrew same time as Stafford. CJ got over 200 targets.Scheffler stepped up that year, Joique Bell caught a lot of passes. 485 yds receiving (68 receptions), 414 yds rushing. (82 carries) See what I mean about pass catching RBs?

2013- CJ, Durham, and the Bell/Bush show (receptions). I say again, we bailed on the run game so we could pass to them. Combined 149 receptions to just them.

2014 - CJ, Tate, Bush, Bell (109 targets to Bush and Bell, still).

Poor Stafford. Maybe we should erect a shrine?

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And these aren’t indexed to pass attempts, either.

Stafford has 5341 pass attempts

Kitna has 4442 but only 3 fewer sacks.

But did Kitna get anywhere near the kind of sympathy Stafford gets? Ha. No. He just “sucked”. Funny how excuses apply to some QBs but not others…

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Also, I think Alex Smith’s last sack should count for about 30 sacks… Daaaaannnng.

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The reason that Kitna “sucks” is because he never won more than 6 games in a season with the Lions. Stafford has at least been the QB in a couple of playoff games. I’m not really wanting to defend Stafford but you seem to put all of this on him and while i agree he needs to play better, I just don’t think the Lions have really been that good. Other than a few years with Suh on dline the defense hasn’t been very good. And we went 5 years without a running back topping a 100 yards. Honestly, Caldwell should have never been fired if you just look at his record and compare it to the 20 years before him. I mean the Bucc’s have won the NFCN more times than we have. So again I agree Stafford isn’t really earning his paycheck but there’s a lot of other factors. Patricia pretty much said at the beginning of the season this would be a long process. And watching the offense, defense, and ST at the start of the season I absolutely get it. We sucked. And if we were paying Matt 15mil a season how much better would we be? I feel pretty confident that another 12mil in cap space doesn’t make this team a contender. If Patricia can make it 3 years and get the coaches in here he wants and actually change the culture then we might be on to something. By that time we can dump Staffords contract and go a different direction. I for one would love to see a kick ass defense and running game and not have to put it all on the shoulders of the unlucky fellow trying to play QB for the Detroit Lions.

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This post has went way off the rails it was about Patricia and I fell into it also. Get back on the original post please.

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7-9 in 2007.

I wonder what happens if Kitna has CJ in his prime… It’s not like Kitna had killer backs, either.

Compare 2007 to 2016 (the first year Stafford didn’t have CJ) weapons.

M. Jones, Tate, Anquan Boldin,

v.

Shawn McDonald, Mike Furrey, Roy Williams

Are you going to tell me that Kitna had weapons but Stafford, nobody to throw to?

Want to compare OL? (Right side of Peterman and Foster ring a bell?)

The sick part is that both offenses scored 346 points on the season.

The defense. in 2007, 444 points against. 2016, 358.

My point is that circumstances are always pointed out for Stafford, but never for Kitna. Seems to me Kitna had far less support from his cast than Stafford had. Put Stafford on 2007, you see a better result? I don’t.

Give Kitna the same number of attempts as Stafford got in 2016 and you have a statistical dead heat for yards. Kitna had 63.3% completion that year, by the way.

Stafford protected the ball better, to be sure. He was on the Caldwell diet.

But the biggest difference, to me, is that Kitna cost us nowhere near 15% of the cap.

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I liked Kitna but the Lions were awful during his time here. Martz drove me crazy but his offense was fun to watch.

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I was a total Kitna fan. Batch fan too. But not Joey.

I didn’t want Stafford, mostly because I never wanted a top 10 QB because of the financial risk. I think spending too much on the QB position is a mistake because his productivity is almost always a result of the team around him. If you spend too much on a QB, you can’t afford the team you need to win. Taking a top 10 QB is too big a risk (Leaf, Jamarcus Russell, etc) to take.

I think we should move on because I think he’s not going to get us there with 85% of the cap to build a team that can support him. I could be wrong. I’d love it if he proved me wrong, but he hasn’t come close to that. I’m still upset about the 2013 choke job (which lost us Schwartz, who would have taken Donald, not Ebron) and 2014 choke against Dallas. He should have just audibled and hit CJ, who was the widest of open pre-snap. We needed ONE yard. So he runs with the play that takes 8 seconds to develop? To Pettigrew? Even without the penalty, he missed him way short. I suggest, too, that if Pettigrew didn’t have his facemask, he’d have turned around and had a chance to pick that short ball. Yeah, I’m upset we got jobbed by the refs, but that wasn’t exactly a cleanly executed play but for the dubious reversal.

Anyway, the new rookie cap changed my mind about top 10 QBs and the success of these recent young QBs has only reinforced that. (I noticed the shift after what Seattle did with Russell Wilson).

I would also add that if a QB gives us a super bowl, I’d give him 50% of the cap the following year in bonuses. Dynasties are nice, but I’m not greedy.

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well Stafford has been lights out better then any QB the Lions have ever had in my 59 years bar none. Money well spent IMO

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If you take Andy Dalton and Jay Cutler and squish them together you get Matt Stafford