Mr. Ford was a business man, and his Teams fills the stands witch keeps the money flowing. He learned a long time ago that you don’t need to win in the NFL to fill the stands you just need to change every 3 or 4 years and the stands will stay full. Change the QB or coach or GM and all is forgotten. Winning is just extra it’s not necessary to be profitable. If you can’t win just change something. I think Mr. Ford wanted to win but it wasn’t necessary to be profitable. So he was ok with losing too.
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Yes
Especially off BQ MO
Even 0-16 kinda had a fun wild unpredictable bad news bears feel
Where this just felt so spirit crushing because sum of parts didn’t add up to what should’ve been better
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look I’m not talking about how much money they could throw around , I am talking about LOSING & LOSS. you want to be a great rapper that makes millions, well you cannot flop all the damn time or your just done/over with.
You can’t want to be a big shot at horse races and have your horses lose all the damn time , bc gee everyone has figured out , you don’t know what the hell your doing…and your done. You can’t want to race at NASCAR and always have a car that never wins and can’t get sponsored, bc you look like a fool. WCF just HAD to have The Portsmouth Spartans that became The Detroit Lions but his team lost it’s ass far more than won, the only thing we do is keep the gutter active. Sheila is here now, I WANT THIS TEAM TO WIN…not 10,20, 30, 40-60 more years of LOSING !! you can say I’m fed up with the bullshit and the team never looking like LIONS, but getting slapped around. I don’t care if we’re 16th-best…that is a step in the right direction !
Lions were never cheap they always spend to the Cap WCF was loyal to a fault with people he hired.
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I think they just never changed till this season , they would hire the new people would say oh this team is just few players away . They would hired few expensive players sit at top of cap teams an not win just keep feeding fan base same “We Are Close” BS.
This new group with Sheila saying ok lets take are time an not chase wins but build a winner.
My biggest fear is she will change an listen to fans oh get this guy that guy an we end up in Cap hell an go back chasing.
We are in very good Cap position an it will get better an we have solid draft numbers next two draft (picks)
Build that strong base with a good staff the watch the place rock with wins.
we have like 14 one year contracts imagine 7 really prove they should be getting long term. We do have young players from before already signed for future add the 7 an say most of this draft an next seasons draft your now looking a a strong base with maybe few more young FA added .
With still another 2 first round pick draft in 2023 an Cap room now you have a deep an young base to add few top tier FA.
No More Chasing Wins
You don’t know how their payroll expense and investment compares to the other ( winning ) teams to know for sure where they cut corners.
Then when you have stories of the team going after their greatest players’ unearned ( yet often given by other teams to their stars ) signing bonuses … in the context of the league … do they look cheap ?
Paying the required salary cap isn’t proof of anything because it’s required spending.
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again ‘I’ wasn’t talking about team expenses, player contracts, or throwing cash around a stadium. I was talking about the money they could have used to make sure that The Detroit Lions had highly experienced, game-winning, knowledgeable people in office at all times so we won more. this didn’t happen.
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Like hiring the finest scouts, pro personnel scouts, the best equipment personnel, etc? Yeah, I see your point. I don’t think we’ll ever see figures in that regard, but they were probably better than the Bengals and probably a lot worse than most of the league. Just my guess.
One thing I did like, that Quinn did, was getting rid of BLESTO scouting. I never even liked the idea of BLESTO.
That’s pronouned with an Empty until further proven by results
Mr. Ford was expressly kept away from The Business, and We Know Why.
Wastrel.
If we could review it all in a spreadsheet side by side with every team I bet the Lions would rate surprisingly high in spending and would be near the top of the league in dollars paid per (insert whatever successful franchise data point here).
We kind of have a split in how the money has been handled. For many years (think Russ Thomas era) the team was cheap. Whether that was Russ or higher ups directing that is irrelevant. We all know it happened. But at least by the 2000’s that changed. We were handing out big bucks and paying to help the player experience in ways that fans don’t see…but we paid big money to the wrong people and the team still sucked. When the Ford’s make Millen one of the highest paid GMs in history that’s not being cheap. That’s being stupid. There’s a difference. There are lots of examples of that kind of stuff, where people bad at their job were paid as well or better than guys from other teams who were good at their jobs. Again, that’s not about being cheap.
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Yeah, I would definitely agree with your take. Russ Thomas most certainly was a cheapskate. You remember the brief period where there was open free agency and no salary cap? Teams like the Packers were signing Reggie White, 49ers got Ricky Jackson, and the Lions got diddly squat.
You could literally buy a Super Bowl with the available talent. Russ Thomas signed nobody.
Millen got paid megamoney to run our drafts like a 12 year old reading PFF’s top 200 magazine.
Actually, that approach might have been better with the dismal outcomes. Let’s draft a bunch of long ball receivers and put them in the worst possible offense for their skillset. What could go wrong? Take the wind, Marty. Ei yi yi.
Better stop now 
. Memory Lane sucks for us Lions fans. 
In the Ford family, the best of them end up working as executives at the car company.
It’s telling that William Clay Ford did not. And instead picked up this previously championship-winning franchise as his hobby.
As opposed to someone who worked their way up to millionaire status, Ford was a fourth-generation silver-spooner. Another factor in my opinion.
With no finely honed business acumen, the Lions were never run like a business under WCF. (And it’s notable that he married an heiress to the Firestone fortune, another trust fund baby.)
As previously mentioned, WCF valued his personal relationship with people, and loyalty, over competency.
Franchises like the Steelers and 49ers showed the value of longevity, but the Lions would keep people who had demonstrably failed at their jobs, in their desperate attempt to copy cat. Matt Millen getting 8 years is one of the most inexplicable things in sports history. Millen wasn’t just bad, he was a mailing-it-in lazy-ass. He was running off to Pennsylvania every weekend and never working an extra hour.
But even before him, in a bit of a front-office power struggle, Ford had the choice of a real football guy in Kevin Colbert, or their own bean-counter in Chuck Schmidt, to whom WCF felt more close. Schmidt won that power struggle, and Colbert went off to build the multiple Lombardi-trophy winning Steelers teams of the 2000s and since.
Before that was the Russ Thomas era. Thomas proved his worth to WCF by pinching pennies tighter than anyone else could. I don’t believe he gave a shit about winning. And he stayed forever.
Sheila Ford Hamp is another trust fund baby. But she actually seems interested in the competitive aspects of it – and she’s lived through a generation of fan vitriol for the way her parents were. She knows what she doesn’t want to do.
It remains to be seen if things will change, but I’m encouraged.
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