Restore The Roar

0 – 16

Kind of speaks for itself, zero wins and sixteen losses.What was it, one and twenty three over the last year and a half? How do you explain that?  Why would you want to?

You know the Lions are not the only team to not win a game; it’s been done before and in most of our lifetimes too. What everybody forgets is the Colts went winless for the 1982 season, only a tie game with replacement players during the strike shortened season kept them from joining Lion fans in their misery.

So where is a good strike when you need one anyways; best thing that could have happened for me last year would have been a stoppage of play followed by whole new players, I was usually calling for that very plan by the second quarter.

Now you want some good news? Millen and all the coaches and outdated schemes are gone, no more Tampa Two or whatever blocking scheme of the season. It’s over, no more linebackers hang back while your corner does the work, no more let’s watch our QB get killed before we actually send some help that way. No more the bar is high and our pad level is low. These are good things.

Now a bad thing, William Clay Ford has spoke and he hired within, I think he said something about the years of tremendous success they had so he promoted Mayhew and Lewand who decided to make it one big party and keep everybody.

Oh oh, did anybody else get that pain in your gut where ……well, let’s just say it was met with some suspicion, maybe even some out right concern among the Lion faithful. It sounded more like WCF said he cut the head off the snake and now we will stand around and watch the body die.

So there we are, Mayhew is in charge and what happens,happens. One thing we know is WCF has him on a short leash, if this team gets worse history says he will get no more then 8 or 9 years to straighten it out.

Sigh, such is the fortunes of a Lion fan.

Okay, so maybe the Lions should do something, maybe come up with some sort of plan or something.

Yeah, a plan, they can do that, maybe.

But what plan, just having a plan is not enough; we need a plan that works. In the business world they “bench mark” other companies and use “profound knowledge” to create an innovative way to achieve the desired results. In English that means the company pays for mileage and lunch so we can check out some different receptionists then steal someone else’s idea and put the company letter head on it.

Well the NFL is nothing if it’s not a copycat league so let’s go benchmark some teams and find some plans. Seeing as Sprawl has no expense account that I know of I guess flying to the teams for some meetings is out. Instead we will look at a handful of teams that were in a situation like us, you know, pinning all our hopes on some frat boy with a big arm. We will dissect some teams that built around a QB, some very good teams and some very bad teams and figure out what they did right and what went wrong.

Where do we start?

Ask any Lion fan what he thinks of the OL then stand back.The responses range from a detailed analyses of how they should be better this year to a twenty minute rant about how the Lions just don’t care about the lines. If you are lucky you get the one word response, just cover any little ears, language like that should only be used when adults are discussing the Lions.

I doubt many other teams talk that much about their offensive line, aren’t they supposed to be anonymous unless they do something wrong. Okay, that explains why we are on a first name basis with the OL, if the Refs aren’t saying their name some analyst is showing a missed block or we see them on the Jumbotron. There he is; he’s helping up our just sacked QB; again. Funny he wasn’t anywhere on the screen until the play was over.

So maybe we can start there. Were they any teams that had an OL this bad when they drafted their QB? More importantly did any of those teams turn it around and maintain it?

In ’97 the Colts gave up 62 sacks after totals of 43 and 49 the 2 years before that, no way you can start a rookie QB behind that now can you. The new coach Jim Mora didn’t see it that way as Manning started day one. All they did was cut 40 sacks off the 97 total and they have averaged 19.4 sacks a year over the last eleven years. That’s what we’re talking about.

So how did they keep Peyton alive that first year?

To start with Indy was not afraid to move their players around, from left to right, guard to tackle or center, they moved players around until they found the right fit, almost like they had a plan at times.

The 2 tackles in ‘98, Tarik Glenn and Adam Meadows were 1st and 2nd round choices in the '97 draft, one year before they drafted Manning (oh oh, maybe we were supposed to wait for a QB). Curiously the old coachingstaff had put the 1st round pick, Glenn, at guard and played the 2nd round pick, Meadows, at the all important LT spot. Mora changed that in '98 when they put Glenn at LT where he started the next 9 years, even made 3 pro bowls the last 3 years.  always thought they were kind of lifetime achievement awards, I mean I feel he was good, even very good, just not another Odgen, Pace or even Walter Jones.

The ’97 LT Meadows was moved to RT, where he remained thestarter until he was injured in the sixth year and except for a few games 3 years later he was done. I would call him a pretty good player, a little better then average RT.

The only change in personnel was Steve McKinney, a 4th roundpick in '98 who started at LG for the next 4 years. Colts didn't resign him after the 4 year FA kicked in and he signed with the Texans where he was the starting center for the next 4 years and a couple of more years as a back-up. A decent player, maybe even good and a decent career.

By the time they made the playoffs in the second year they brought two more starters, Larry Moore, an undrafted FA out of BYU in '98.Started one year at center (99) for the Colts, they moved him to RG in 2000 where he started for the next 2 years. He started for the 'Skins in 02 and part of 03 at center, then spent 2 more years as a back-up for the Bengals, kind of the definition of journey man lineman.

The other new starter was Waverly Jackson, a 26 year old street FA when they signed him in '98. Started 16 games at RG in '99, spent the next 3 years as a back-up then out of football. He wishes he was a journeyman.

I guess my point is they built there entire OL around a very good LT, a good RT and mixed and matched in the middle. That philosophy has been followed for the entire Manning era. By last year those two tackles were replaced with 2nd round pick LT Ugoh and a 4th round pick Diem at RT, actually pretty similar in talent to the players they replaced.

In the middle they did sign UDFA Jeff Saturday in '99 and by the next year he was the starting center and has a very nice career, pretty much an elite center for his time. The guards on the other hand have been a very different story.

The players who have started at guard for the Colts over the 8 years from 2000 through the 2007 season are the already mentioned McKinney (30 starts) and Moore (27) followed by DeMulling (41), Ryan Diem (24) in the Colt tradition of getting their feet wet before they moved him to RT, Sciullo(13), Scott (57), Lilja (43), Peko (9), and Gandy (14).  Not one of those players was higher then a 4thround pick and except for Diem who moved to RT, not one of those players stayed past 4 years of team exclusive rights.

So over the first 9 years of the Manning era the Indy plan was ride the one very good LT and the decent RT they were given, turn an UDFA into a pro bowl center and use late round picks and street FAs to fill the rest. From ’98 until 2007 the Colts used a 3rd round pick on the tragic Burlsworth, four 4th round picks and 8 more picks in the 5th through 7th rounds. Except for none in 2002, they took an O lineman in the 4th round or later every year, often 2 and they kept their eyes open for UDFAs. Out of it they got one elite type player in Jeff Saturday, 3 pretty good players that they kept as long as they were cheap and a bunch of fill ins along with some training for future tackles. Even the 2nd round pick in 2007 of Ugoh fits into the plan considering he replaced Glenn at LT, got to keep that very good LT.

You have to say it worked, in Peyton Manning’s career he has been sacked 205 times or an average of 18.6 sacks a year and while they are not a power running team they have ran the ball well.

The one draft where they deviated from the plan was 2008 when they drafted Pollack in the second round and he started 13 games at RG, of course they might be looking at replacing Diem at RT eventually, in that case it will be back to low draft picks and constant change at guard and in 2009 it was back to the old when the only OL pick was a 7th round guard.

So what does Indy gain from their strategy of using low picks on OL?

The obvious advantage of that kind of plan is you can save your top picks and your salary cap for other positions.

So if Indy didn’t use many of those “top 100 players coming out of college every year” 1st, 2nd and 3rd round picks that teams expect to find players from what were they using their main picks on?

Of the 35 picks in the top 3 rounds Indy has had since drafting Manning, 23 of them were on defense with 12 DBs leading they way with 6 DL and 5 LBs. On the 12 offensive picks it was 3 OL, 2 TEs, 3 RBs and 4 WRs.While they can’t be accused of ignoring the defense when 2/3rds of their main picks were on defense, what they might be guilty of is not using their very best picks on defense. Of the nine 1st round picks, six were for offense with 3 RBs, 2 WRs and a TE; around some circles those are considered “sexy picks”. The highest they drafted defense was Feeney, 11th overall in2002, other then that it was LB Morris, 28th in 2000 and CB Jackson, 29th in 2005 for 1st round picks.

It is impossible to tell if they are really “following their board” unless they release some sort of proof that I don’t think is going to happen and they have hit on all of their 1st round offensive picks so you can’t say they took bad players. It’s when they concentrated on defense, 20 out of 26 picks, in the 2nd and 3rd round that their batting average goes way down. Out of those 26 picks the only player to make a pro bowl with the Colts is the safety Bob Sanders, twice. With the kind of record they have had you would think they would have done better then that.

I don’t know if they were just bad judges of defensive prospects or they were reaching all the time for defense or it’s bad coaching, hard to believe with Dungy and Mora as head coaches. Other then Sanders they never hit any home runs and not a lot of doubles either. Most of the players were just alright and to me it was them not getting many top players out of the 2nd and 3rd rounds that has played a large part in keeping them from accomplishing more.

Multiple Super Bowl teams usually have a couple of stars out of those draft picks along with some starters and what makes it worse for the Colts was they were always defensive picks. Maybe a little mix in the busts andthey can adjust a little, move some players around. But when one whole side of the ball is Dwight Feeney, Bob Sanders and a bunch of young, not too good players it’s hard to compete.

And the constant drafting on defense hurts because now you have to give playing time to players who never really developed and by the time some player proved he wasn’t that good another draft pick was coming in, they actually would have been better off picking a bunch of WRs and signing some free agents for the defense. You have got to believe that many a defensive FA would have loved to play for Indy, lots of playing time and they could be the piece that puts the Colts in the Super Bowl, probably even take the just want a ring discount. But no way could Indy even think about signing some FA DT when they just drafted one the year before in the 2nd round.

Considering how their defense has performed over those years maybe they should have gone defense a little more often in the first round. However, considering they are 117 and 59 over those 11 years and they do have a ring it is hard to say they don’t know what they are doing. They have always claimed to follow a “best player available” approach and the argument is they are usually drafting so late in the 1st round that they have to take what is left. It’s easy to go back and pick out some defensive players they could have taken but we have no idea how they had those players rated and they were never the only team to pass on some very good players.

Add it all up and in the end they are the Ying to the Ravens Yang, for every great defense with a ring there is a great offense with one.The teams with multiple rings seem to have offense and defense, even a little special teams mixed in. Something the Patriots have demonstrated to Indy personally more then once over the last 11 years.

Hey the Patriots, didn’t they build around a QB once? Sounds like a good place to go with my next blog. For now we can look at the Indy experience and see what we learned.

First, playing your big armed frat boy might not be a bad idea.

Second, you don’t need to use a bunch of high picks on the OL and it doesn't have to be an elite LT.

Third, it’s best to mix up your top draft picks a little between offense and defense.

Fourth, maybe bringing in some hungry veterans would be a good thing, last year every starter played their first NFL game for the Colts. Two or three well placed veteran FAs on that defense might not be a bad idea.

Can't wait to see how Parcells built around a QB.