RedRamage

I hope for great success for Bevell... at least for the next few games.

"the lions left hall of famers' careers incomplete because they have always failed to hire a management team that could bring them sustained organizational success. period." Incomplete =/= ruined. Further, incomplete isn't well defined anymore than "ruined" is. You seem to be arguing that a player can only have a complete career if it included x, y, and/or z. That seems like a subjective opinion to me. "realizing the lions have left talented players' careers unfulfilled in terms of organizational success is not disputable." This is at least somewhat better defined. Here you seem to be saying that a player's career will not be fulfilled unless the team has success. But while it's better defined, it's still ambiguous. What is organizational success? Does it mean winning a SB? Would multiple conference championships be enough? Not that the Lions have done either, but the point is that it's still not very well defined. Further, it's still subjective. It's your opinion that a player's career is unfulfilled with out this success. A player who sets multiple individual records, who has had some amazing highlight moments, who earns a tremendous amount of money and is a no-doubt HOF caliber player could very easily consider his career a fulfilling and accomplished career, even without a ring. Of course, all this said, if the intention was only to make a joke about a promising player have to suffer in Detroit, then I'm being super nitpicky about a throw-away one liner and that's dumb of me. (For the record I'd like to point out that I only entered the discussion after the nitpicky part already started) But while it may be silly of me to be nitpicky about a joke, it also is NOT defending the Lions organization.

That part I will agree with.

If Meyer did this trade he should be fired on the spot... hopefully right after the NFL makes the trade official so it can't be undone. Please don't misunderstand... I don't think Decker is trash at all. He's a very good player and the Lions would create yet another hole they would need to fill. But I absolutely would take that deal from the Lions side in a heart beat. Decker will be 29 at the start of next year and probably 31, 32 before the Lions are looking at being really competitive again. He's going to be getting old (for the NFL of course) by then. I'd absolutely take the 3rd overall pick for him. As for Meyer, if a guy leading a bad team trades away a super high draft pick for an very good, but aging, player... that's a fireable offense right there.

If you're referring to people who have said that SJS (Stafford, Johnson, and Sanders) didn't have ruined careers by being on the Lions, then I don't think those people are defending the Lions. Personally, I'm saying that the measurement of a successful career depends on what tool you're using to measure and for the players it very much depends on their personal desires. If you define a player as successful when their team wins... then sure... the Lions have "ruined" the careers of SJS (and whomever else you wanna throw in the mix). But I think it's entirely possible to recognize a player as being successful individually even if the team didn't win a lot and I look no further than the HOF as proof of this. (The other obvious measuring stick is money, which SJ got plenty of and Sanders isn't in the poor house either.) A rebuttal from someone above (forgot and way to lazy to look it up) is that if asked the biggest regret that various great past players have it is often not winning the big game. I don't doubt that that's true at all. But that doesn't preclude a player (or fans) from considering a career to be successful. Marino, for example, could easily say: "Yeah, I had a great run in the NFL... I regret not winning a SB, but still, I had a LOT of success, made a lot of friend, earned a lot of money, etc. etc."

Success or failure in a career is very much a personal thing. Did Dan Marino have a failed career because he never won a SB? Is Ty Cobb a failure because he never won a WS? Now obviously no professional athlete wants to spend a good portion of his/her career on a team that loses far more often than it wins. But defining an individual players success or failure based on team results is silly. Do you consider Barry Sanders a failure because the Lions couldn't put a better team around him? Again, I get it that professionals are competitive and want to win. But these are team games we're talking about and to say someone is a failure because the team didn't win more is wrong.

The funny thing is that I thought this would be a very weird record and possible never even having been seen in the NFL in the past. But as recently as 2008 the Bengal had that record. There may be more recent time too but I stopped looking after I found that cause it wasn't as odd as I thought it would be.

Thought this might be an interesting topic. I came across this book recent: Dutch Clark: The Life of an NFL Legend and the Birth of the Detroit Lions I borrowed it from my local library as something to read during some downtime during Xmas Break. Haven't started reading it yet but glanced through it and man... it's a thick book with very small print. My old eyes might have a hard time reading it. (I wish I could find an electronic version that I can increase the font size, but my local library doesn't have an electronic version to borrow and the price for the Kindle version is $60+, yikes!) Any, I'm curious if anyone has read this book and if so what you thoughts were. Expanding this idea to a bit broader scope: Do you have any other Lions related books that you've read and would recommend? Here's two from me: Paper Lion - If you're not familiar with this story it's about a sport journalist who went "under cover" (Team officials knew about it, players didn't... after first) as a rookie QB with the Lions for training camp in the mid '60s. It's a pretty good read with some nice inside looks at what training camp in the NFL was like back then. He made some friends with some of the players and even wrote a sort of follow up book called Mad Ducks and Bears with Alex Karras and John Gordy. Detroit: City of Champions - This one isn't just about the Lions but covers the 35-36 sports season when Detroit was king of the sports world: Joe Louis was coming on the scene and the Tigers, Lions, and RedWings all won their first championships. There's two follow up books that go in depth into all the players from all the teams as well.

Even if it was legitimate (which I'm not doubting) it still can't be legal though. I mean once you start signaling what you're going to do and the defense has to react to that, you can't change your mind. It's like signaling for a fair catch... as soon as you do that the covering team is going to react differently. A returning can't change his mind after signaling, even if it's just a split second after he starting signaling. (For the record I don't think you're disagreeing here, I'm just trying to emphasis that because of special protections offered for the act of sliding it can't be something that can be faked.)

Well, that's good imho.

I think we as Lions fans especially have witnessed first hand that being a good OC or DC does not automatically translate into being a good HC. Logically, the reverse is also true. There are skills that one position needs that are different than what another position needs. I think a person could be a wildly successful HC without being a good coordinator.

That's poor logic. If the guy before you was only successful 1% of the time so you replaced him and you're successful 3% of the time, that's not a significant improvement and you should absolute try to find someone better. Just because you're marginally better than the previous option doesn't mean you're automatically good.

I took this to mean that this was his opinion on that specific action. Regardless you referenced an mistake from the previous game which seemed to indicate you were talking about all past mistakes. Personally I wasn't a fan of the play called... I'm more mixed on whether to go for it on 4th or not. But my frustration is that it seems too many people are all or nothing on Campbell. If you don't dislike everything than you're just an apologist who accepts everything.

I was one of them... well, maybe not dancing on his grave but certainly saying that it was good evidence that Belichick was maybe not as good as everyone thought he was.

Did anyone say that? Just because some people don't actively dislike some decisions that others find questionable by Campbell doesn't me that we accept or like all decisions that Campbell makes.

Having read through this thread I think WAAAAAYYYYYYYY too much is being made out of this TO call. I think it was reasonable to call the TO. Prior to this drive the last two drives by the Vikings: 6 plays, 14 yards, fumble 6 plays, 16 yards, punt Before the TO: Vikings got a pass off for 2 yards. This means in the previous 13 offensive plays by the Vikings they averaged less than 2.5 yards per play. The Vikings were reeling, the Lions' offense was clicking (17 unanswered points). and the the Lions defense was stuffing the Vikings. If the Lions stop the Vikings, get the ball and score then get the ball to start the 3rd qtr and score... let's say one is a TD the other FG, that would have put them at 24-6 with less than a half to play. This not an unreasonable expectation given how the game was playing out to that point. I don't see it as a bad move to call the TO and hope for another possession. Now the comeback I've seen thrown out here is if it was such a good idea, why didn't Campbell call another TO after the next play? Again, this is very reasonable. The Vikings got a big gain on the next play (16 yards) so it seems less likely that the Lions would get a quick stop, so now you don't call another TO. That's honestly GOOD coaching. How many times do we see a team that's got just a little time left in a half try a play or two and if they don't good yardage just kneel and run out the clock. Is that bad coaching? No, it's testing the waters and then when things don't pan out you shift gears. I will be honest, during the game I also thought it was odd to call a time out then... but looking at the stats and situation after, I think it makes all the sense in the world. A defense was humming and just stopped a pass for two yards deep in Vikings territory, the chance for a quick 3 and out resulting in good field position was there. It was the right call.

From Vikings reddit:

They way they protect QBs they should really make fake slides illegal. Of course that might be harder to enforce... what constitutes going to far into a slide? Does it become a version of the balk pitch but for football?

So he's OJ Watt? ('O' is half way between J and T in case you missed that.)

Do you have a link to that study? I'd be interested in checking it out.

Personally I'm treating Campbell as a rookie. Just like a rookie player I expect to see some mistakes his first year. I also hope to see some growth and some potential... some reason to get excited about the future of the man. I don't call a player a bust after one season, so I'm not going to call Campbell a bust after one season. I think it's very fair to call out Campbell errors. I do think that he's made mistakes with game management and play calling. I do think that he needs to get better in those area. But I think it's also fair to say that we expect him to be a work in progress and while we don't like or accept the mistakes, but understand that they will happen and it's part of the growth process of any rookie. Personally I'm happy with some things about Campbell. The team is certainly playing very hard for him. He seems to have a good attitude and I think that shows in how the team plays. I like how the run game seems to have improved dramatically under his leadership. I'm also unhappy with somethings. I think clock management needs to be improved and I think play calling isn't a strong suit for him right now. Again, I'm not ready to call Campbell a bust right now. I consider him a rookie who will make rookie mistakes and needs to grow. I'm hopeful that we see progress next year and I think we should keep him for another year. If we see no growth/improvement next year, then we can start talking about whether he's a bust or not.

Not sure if this is supposed to be sarcasm or not...

He can throw fine to first, the problem is that he sees the guy running down the line and figures the firstbaseman is covered, so he checks down and throws to the second baseman instead.

I fully expect this to be a calm, logical, rational place for discussion.

Here's where progress needs to be made imho, but it's a very complicated issue. For players it's probably a little more clear cut, but I don't think it's black and white from a owner, front office, or fans perspective.' I'm sure the players would like to see a set minimum to sure that teams aren't just pocketing "tax money" from other major market teams but instead investing that into players. But as a fan I don't want my team to just pay player #26 enough to ensure that they cross the minimum payroll line. That's a waste of money to me that could be spent improving facilities, hiring better staff, adding to the scouting team, or even saving up to spend next year. The obvious comeback to that is: But are the owners doing that? I dunno... Maybe create a salary floor: If a team isn't at that floor they don't get tax money (or maybe reduced tax money depending on how far under the floor they are?), instead that money goes into (read in Al Gore's voice) "a lockbox" that teams can apply to get money from. Like: "We want to improve parking for our fans, so we're requesting $X dollars from the tax fund to help with that." Or: "We want to hire a new scout for this region and would like a grant for that this year."