I get that you have limited resources. I’m not saying it’s easy. But I think if you need to fill holes, you do it with 2nd teir FAs (the way Quinn seems to employ often) and use the draft for future talent. You need more than one QB. Without Foles, the Eagles don’t win the Superbowl.
In the real world, you buy extra batteries even if you see a bunch of other things you also need.
I have never once attacked Stafford’s leadership. I agree with you, 100%, that we’re not there at practice, film room, or even on the field (although we’ve had a few “mic’d” events we could listen to if we want a tiny sliver). Not enough evidence.
Would you not get offended if people put words in your mouth giving you a position you haven’t taken? And that’s not even considering that your accusation is also basically calling me intellectually dishonest.
I think you owe me an apology for that.
I just went and looked. I think you might be getting me confused with someone else here too.
Could you provide me an example of where I went crazy off topic? I may have followed someone else who raised the issue, but I don’t do it.
Are you insisting that I don’t make any negative comments about Stafford in a thread unless the topic of the thread is about Stafford? What if there’s a thread, hypothetically, blaming the OL and the WRs and the coaches for the INTs in the Jets game? Stafford wasn’t mentioned. Is it off topic? WRs are completely dependent on the QB. Placement and timing is a huge issue.
I’m confident that I can explain relevance of any comment I’ve made.
So please find me an example (or wait for one) so I can clear my name.
I hadn’t read that article before. Brutal but accurate. Stafford hasn’t been elite. At this point there’s no real hope he will be. It will be up to the coaches to figure out how to win with his skill set
So far it looks like Quinn’s plan is to transition to a run-first team with the threat of the pass rather than the throw always and often of Cooter/Linehan
We all know the stats, the numbers in the first to third quarters and our losing record. The part I thought was interesting was this, “He’s a tough, strong-armed pro, but not necessarily a wildly driven leader. That sentiment is growing around the league, and former NFL quarterback Rich Gannon, now a CBS Sports Network analyst, unloaded this week.” I agree, it simply is who he is. If we actually do become a run heavy team it will be easy to part ways when his contract carries a lot less dead money.
My chief argument against him is that he’s costing the cap too much for what he brings. I don’t think he’s an awful QB (I think he is merely average in touch and placement and I’m not sure he goes too far down in his reads either). I love his big arm. I think he’s pretty tough. And when his light goes on, he’s awesome. Problem is it never stays on for an entire game, which frustrates me to no end.
I agree we could part with him if we get run heavy. It will be even easier to part ways if some other team believes that THEY can win with him. It’s one way our historical ineptitude works in our favor. “The Lions suck. They’d even make Joe Montana suck…” I’ve seen comments where teams would be fighting over themselves to trade for Stafford. If such offers arise, it’s a win win. Lions get picks and cap relief. Trade partner gets Stafford for a few years way below market. It’s plausible, at least. Better for that scenario if Stafford looks great this year.
If we get into the playoffs this year and Stafford looks more consistent, then we keep building and keep the guy. Stafford starts to get cheaper in 2021 and maybe the team will be finished being built into a serious contender by then?
Making him carry the offense did him no favors. It also created a situation where we could never bring in a serious contender for the #1 QB position. I think that’s also a mistake. Unless you’re Rodgers or Brees or Brady, your job should be subject to competition. Even those guys need replacement in case of injury. Like how the Patriots just made Bledsoe “Patriot for Life” the year he got hurt and Brady took over…
He’s adequate. If Trent Dilfer can win a Super Bowl, so can Matt.
Dilfer took 0.5% of cap that year. $1,000,000 salary. $188M cap. I would say that that defense won the super bowl, not Dilfer.
That season 333 points for, 165 points against. That is, literally, insane low. 9.4 ppg. Mike McMahon could probably win with that defense.
Okay, Dilfer didn’t lose the Super Bowl.
Mark Rypien, Brad Johnson…
There is a significant number of non-elite QBs who “won” the super bowl.
Which raises the question: why do we need Stafford in particular if a cheap guy can do it?
I think the chief argument many have with you Angry, is it sounds like you’re saying anyone could do as good or better a job then Stafford. To which, most Lions respond with: “Kitna, Joey, Garcia, McMahon, Batch,Reich,Frerotte, Culpepper, Stoney, Mitchell, Krieg, Ware,Peete, Long…”
It’s just as likely, if not more possible,that the alternative could be worse.
But I do commend you. Never rule out anything when it comes to winning games. If the option is out there, and someone offers the right deal, I’d hope we’d pull the trigger.
Because it’s easier with a good QB and he’s the best we’ve had in 60 years.
Thank you. My argument, however, is more nuanced. The nuance would be more readily brought out if I didn’t get a knee jerk defense from the uber pro Stafford crowd.
First, not to be too flippant, but we can lose divisions and playoff games with any of those QBs you listed. So in that sense, couldn’t do worse.
Second, there is the trade off. You might get a guy who isn’t as good as Stafford straight up, but then they won’t also be demanding 15.7% of the cap, either. so with the difference, you could get a stronger defense and better OL and better LBs which I think could win as many games as
I liked Kitna and Batch (pre injury especially). Batch was tough and accurate. Shame he got hurt because he had the smarts, too.
Garcia was a proven winner. Might have been decent in 2005 but for that broken leg. He did better than Joey against Chicago even without the top 2 WRs that Joey had in the lineup when he played. That wasn’t altogether a complete team, either.
The rest of that list, uh, no. I did argue we were better off with McMahon than Joey, but in no way is he anywhere near Stafford. Maybe arm strength? I have no idea.
My point is that you can maybe do better as a team even with a slight downgrade in QB ability if for no other reason than you can afford more supporting cast.
We spent considerable resources trying to build around Stafford for 10 straight years. First year we had a super weak team, historically bad defense. We draft Stafford #1 overall and then Pettigrew as a receiving threat to join Calvin Johnson. Then Schwartz focused on building the defense. We started out 7-5 in 2013, with the division as ours to lose. Stafford screwed the pooch. Go back and look at his performance the last 4 games (he got out played by Foles in the same snow storm). That pick 6 against the Giants was flat out awful. Then the Lions opted for Stafford over Schwartz (whose defense was mature in 2014, and one of the best we’ve ever had and would have been better if we’d taken Donald instead of needing to upgrade the TE position for the offense…)
I’d rather spend resources on building a strong run game and strong defense. Kind of like the guy who was drafted at the same time as Stafford. Sanchez. Stafford is the better QB. It’s not even in question. But the Jets won 4 road playoff games in his first 2 years. I’d rather have that than what we have.
Remember the team that took Aaron Curry? He was a bust, but that team ended up taking a QB in the 3rd round and getting to the super bowl 2 years in a row. Super cheap. Could afford role playing defenders and out bid us for Cliff Avril when he was FA.
Football’s a team game. Not a “who has the best QB” game. QBs look good on great teams. Some transcend (like Brees, or Rodgers) but their teams don’t win without defense.
Stafford may be the best QB we’ve had. And if we get all the right parts for him, we can have a dynamic offense with him, and have (2011) . But Calvin Johnson is gone (anyone who argues he wasn’t a huge asset is a huge asshat, IMO). In 2011, by the way, Stafford’s cap number was only $6M. (out of $120M). Interesting (coincidence?) that we do the best when his cap hit was lowest? To me it is. The defense wasn’t good, so we wasted that high power offense. Just like we wasted the great defense in 2014 with crap offense.
2011 was a long time ago. I doubt we get back to that level as long as we’re spending 15%+ of the cap on Stafford. That only leaves 85% of the cap for the other 52 players. You have to cut somewhere, and when you do, then it magically turns into an excuse as to why Stafford doesn’t succeed and there is absolutely no causal connection to all the money he gets paid…
It’s not enough to say “Stafford’s the best we’ve had”. Valuation must enter the equation. Can we find someone who is competent and can run the system for less? Can we get the next Patrick Mahomes if we take a shot in the draft? So far, we’ve brought in NONE who could even come close to threaten Stafford’s job. We’ve put all our eggs in one basket and that strategy so far has gotten us zero playoff wins and zero division titles.
Stafford is very good best we’ve had (although I liked Batch better since he was less turnover prone) but there are flaws in his game and he’s not elite. So why are we paying him as if he is elite? Seems like a bad investment to me.
I think we have as good a chance to win rolling the dice on a rookie draft pick, saving all that money, and building a strong run game and strong defense. The guy you get should be hella accurate and it’d be nice if he also had wheels. The new rookie cap makes it less painful if you don’t hit on a rookie QB near the top. We’ve been re-upping a pre-rookie cap guy whose had all the leverage every time. Thanks to Quinn, we get some leverage back in 2022. We’ll have more leverage if we’d pull the trigger on drafting a guy higher in the draft.
I could do a better job and I’d do it for 10 million or so. I am better than Troy Aikman but not quite as good as Donovan McNabb. I’ll even give you a generous 2 year deal with no roster bonus, no workout bonus and minimum salary you can pay me the rest in signing bonus.
@AngryDriver
The only part of your last post I disagree with is saying the team was better in 2011 because Stafford was only 6% of the cap. The team was better because… well it was a better team. (Suh, Tulloch, CWilliams, Titus, Best).
I’m okay with ditching Stafford if the alternative is better (which I, and many others have a hard time believing there is right now). But what I really think it comes down to, is do a better job of drafting, and then somehow avoid all the garbage Lions luck.
Two things. First, I’m not sure there’s a causal connection between what we paid him and the offense. I just noted the coincidence. We did have a lot of capital invested in the offense in 2011 and we were building the defense. The defense’s peak, unfortunately, coincided with Caldwell-Lombardi. Major governor on Stafford. I can see why they tried “fix” him (Calwell said a billion times) after 2013, but the offense was better in 2011-2013 in terms of points scored. Had we kept that offense in 2014 (i.e. not firing Schwartz), I think instead of Ebron, we draft Donald and we’d have had home field advantage and path to super bowl. But it was the collapse in 2013 that caused the change. Maybe Schwartz went to ownership and said “i have no confidence in Stafford” at which point they kicked his a## out (like they did to Mooch when he said the same about Joey). Speculation, but that abrupt change destroyed the momentum.
And all Caldwell did was nurse his beer.
Anyway, the definition of “better” to me, includes valuation. If we can get competent play from the QB position, especially where it fits the system, for significantly less, that would be the better option for me. I’d take a shot at a top rookie QB every year until we get one that can lead. It would save us about 13% for about 3 or 4 years in a row. We can use that cap space to build a strong D and strong run game. We’ve been in 75% pass pro for far too long. It’s hurt the run game. We deliberately build a pass first team and I don’t want any part of that any more. It’s been pissing me off since the run and shoot, frankly, although it was awesome to watch Barry with relatively open field all the time, even if he did get nailed behind the LOS a lot.
Better than Stafford? There clearly is no “better” right now, but that’s short term. Long term? Who knows? I know that we’re not going to have that option unless we start bringing in a legitimate challenger, something we haven’t done since Stafford’s been here. We didn’t even draft 1 QB after him until 2016, and then it was Rudock in round 5. Hardly a contender.
You should always try to get better (my definition) at every position all the time and we neglected to do that. And part of that is his cost. The other part is that we kept trying to get weapons specifically for him. Then when one system didn’t work, we tried a different one, then another different one…
I realize that there are, literally, tons more needs. But it’s very hard for me to ignore the competitive advantage brought by a cheap, young QB for 3-4 years as a viable option to the promised land.
It’d be fun to watch… You know you’d get hit a lot, don’t you?
Won’t debate that we need serious competition for Stafford. I wanted to take Dak, Siemian, Mettenberger, Hackenburg and McCarron just to name a few over the last couple years. I agree it feels like they could’ve/should’ve done more in that area. However, I don’t think any one of those guys would’ve changed this team.
2012 in the 3rd or 4th might have been nice (Foles, Cousins, Wilson). Instead of Ronnel Lewis or Bill Bentley or even Brock Osweiler in the 2nd.
The thing is, I actually think Quinn is getting it. Cook and Savage (both in 4th) are the highest drafted QBs we’ve had since 2010 (Culpepper and Stanton were holdover). Both 4th round.
Hill and Orlovsky (2nd tour) were hand holders. Brains more than QB threats…