Parker, Barnes, Levi, Cephus…. Glass half full?

The War Room Detroit Lions — The Den
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When this year started we all kind of had a “probably a talentless dumpster fire, but just maybe the new culture galvanizes team and they surprise us,” kind of outlook.

Now we are 0-2 after losing games to a pair of teams mostly considered to be top 4-5 in the NFC, and I would say we’ve seen more to be optimistic about than worried about…. Why?

Did we expect the #32 ranked defense in the league last year to be better without a single headliner addition? I mean we’ve changed coaches, schemes, and a fair amount of personnel which typically equates to a learning curve.

We’ve dispatched J Davis, J Coleman, Trufant, Harmon, Shelton, C Jones, Tavaii, and now likely J Collins

We’ve added Brockers, Anzalone, C Harris, Levi O, McNeill, Barnes, Iffy, Parker….

I’d gladly accept a correction to my estimate by D Stroke, but I believe the the top group would have been about 38-42M in cap hits last year and about the same or a touch more this year…. The latter group about 16-17M not just THIS YEAR, but for the next 2-3 years for most of them!

I think that is very very relevant because I would prefer the entire 2nd group to the entire 1st group without question, but add 30M in disposable cap to add 3 IMPACT players and now we are cooking with gas!!!

Same on offense.

Golladay, M Jones, J James, Stafford, Agnew, AP…

Cephus, St Brown, Fells, Goff, Raymond, Williams…

I realize that cephus was on team last year, but hardly got any run due to the players above him on the depth chart, and listed above…

Group 1- keeping them, if we even could have, would have about 60MM this year… maybe a touch less?

Group 2…about 39M this years AND NEXT!

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Imagine- a top UFA CB, SS, and WR in 2022….

Draft-

  1. Edge
  2. WR
  3. LB
  4. RG
  5. S

I wouldn’t put it past this group to consider a move like the rumored Phins and Lions trading Decker for A Jackson and maybe a 2nd? We’d save 14M at RT the next 3 years, keep Sewell at LT and have a better OL than we’ve had the first 2 weeks…

Then we take another RT with theb2nd we’d get.

We are adding a Corey Davis level free agent, adding a 1st round pick WR like a Ridley, Moore, Jefferson area of the draft pick…. A former first round OT on rookie deal, a high pick at RT and OG, just on offense.

Adding likely the top edge in draft, plus a high 2nd LB, a top paid safety and CB, and another rookie S

Bottom line we are fielding a similarly talented team to last year for about 40M less than what the prior regime scheduled to pay guys of similar prodcution levels. We don’t see it this year thanks to all the dead cap.

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What I expect/hope to see is marked improvement as the year goes along. That’s all I was hoping for before the season, and I see no reason to think differently now. It sucks that guys like Iffy and Okudah won’t be able to show improvement along with some of the other guys, but that’s football.

Remember the Dolphins in Flores’s first year? They were an absolute dumpster fire for like the first half of the year, losing 50-0 and stuff. We’ve looked better than they did. But they stuck with it, played hard, and by the end of the year won enough games and showed enough to give the fanbase hope. And then in his 2nd year they won ten games and only missed the playoffs because the AFC was loaded. I think we can do something like that.

As for the draft, I think it’s far too fluid to lay out our picks right now. Yes, we need a WR, but compared to the past two classes this one stinks. Olave and Wilson are probably the best, but I think they’d have been 2nd rounders in the past two drafts. As it stands they’ll probably be gone by our 2nd first round pick. I like Jalen Tolbert a lot too, and that Calvin Austin kid out of Memphis looks like he could be a real matchup nightmare, but he’s not a big dude.

We still have a long way to go before our roster’s healthy. Too many guys on big, bad contracts, too many square pegs for round holes. It takes time to overhaul a roster, and we’ll still be doing it into 2023 I think. We just need to win some games along the way and identify the pieces to move forward.

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I’d just like to see something positive from Onwuzurike this year. He hasn’t played much at all due to injury and there were questions about him from analysts being taken that high.

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Same. He’s the one that I’ve been most concerned about, so far. McNeil has been decent, so far, but I have higher hopes for him too. McNeil is the one I was most excited to see. I expect a couple of big plays from Barnes, this week, but also some rookie screw-ups.

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Agree. The pick I questioned most.

Moehrig
Samuel jr
R Moore
Bolton

All guys I’d love to have on our team right now

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