Detroit Lions: We're Going to Bite a Kneecap Off
Larry Foote will be a Detroit Lion, ~100% chance of that.
Theres also talk between DET/KC that would involve Glen Dorsey coming here for our 2nd rd pick. Not sure I understand why Pioli wants to get rid of him but I'd gladly ship out our 2nd for him.
You add Dorsey/Foote and it makes our draft look that much better. Shaun Rogers also said he wants to come back to Detroit once he gets released from the Browns, which looks likely.
Biggest question going into the season is will Matt Stafford be the starter from weak 1.
Jets fan here so I feel your pain. Happy to get Aaron Glenn as HC. How do you think him leaving will affect the Lions defense next year?
Loaded question. I think he got the absolute maximum out of the hand he was dealt.
They will be better, much better but that will be more due to overall health and not a change of defensive coordinators or scheme. He held the defensive together as long as he could but no team in the NFL can lose that many starters and key backups and still win. Glenn obviously has the mind to win as a DC but if that translates to Head Coach success we won't know until next year, plenty of talented coordinators have failed as a HC.
I doubt he will be one of them, his players seemed to genuinely love him. I remember reading an nice article about a veteran player (may have been Amik Robertson but doesn't really matter) who said Glenn was the first coach he ever had that actually talked to him as a person about stuff outside football, how he was doing, what he wanted to do in life, had him over for dinner with wife and kids. You could tell it meant way more to him than just normal film study.
Just my uneducated opinion: I think Glenn will be a better HC than DC. I think he'll build a good culture and get a lot out of his players, similar to Dan Campbell in some ways. On the DC side, there were a lot of people calling for his head last year, but our CB room was legit worst in the league. We went out and traded for 2 CBs and drafted CB with our first and second round picks, and the defensive side of the ball started playing a lot better... until we lost 65% of our two-deep to injury. Defense looked awful the back 35% of the season, with the exception of the W18 Vikings game, which turns out was just Darnold turning into a pumpkin. Hard to blame Glenn when we were just decimated by injuries; we might have had a very different story if DPOY-level Hutchinson wasn't lost in W7, along with starting and backup LBs, CBs, and DTs throughout the year. OTOH, it was really painful to watch a rookie QB calmly read Glenn's blitzes and punish them again and again last week.
I was really hoping we could pull off a prolonged swap and bring in Saleh.
They play heavy man coverage. Their defensive scheme is not complex. It relies heavily on players making plays. It works great when you have the talent to run it. The Lions defense was legitimately one of the best in the NFL, especially against the run. It will be fine if not very good next year. It sucks the coaching staff is getting decimated but Dan is still at the head of it all and knows his ****. He's the one who very quickly tossed Anthony Lynn aside for Ben Johnson when it wasn't working. This is the price of winning in this league, and I think they'll be fine despite it.
