Archive for Detroit Lions
Hanson Proves Lions Can At Least Be Consistent At One Position
Posted by: | CommentsHe showed up 18 years ago from Washington State University with his right leg and not much else. He didn’t even have a name.
For his first few weeks in town, at Lions training camp, all we knew him as was “the kid who’s replacing Eddie Murray.”
Jason Something-or-Other.
HANSON, we were reminded by the Lions media liaisons.
Kickers in pro football have two kinds of lives, it seems: cameo, or Methuselah.
The 40-year-old kicker is far from an anomaly. If you can survive the first couple of years, you have a good shot at staying in the NFL for a couple of decades.
Morten Anderson, the pride of Michigan State, swatted footballs with his left foot with the reliability of the sunrise. He did it until he was 47 years old. He tried retiring a couple of times, but on each occasion he was asked back. On each occasion he said yes—because being a kicker in the NFL is a pretty good gig. It’s like having a desk job for the Mafia.
Funny thing is, Anderson’s 25-year career started this way: he twisted his ankle on his very first NFL kickoff, way back in 1982. Twisted his ankle on a kickoff?
You betcha. Twisted it good; he missed eight weeks.
He recovered, and kicked for a quarter century longer.
The Lions’ Jason Hanson is 40. He’s been losing his hair for years. Every training camp he shows up and his hairline has receded a couple centimeters. But he plays for the Lions, a franchise that has led the league in hair loss for its coaches and fan base for decades. So what do you expect?
Besides, Hanson doesn’t kick with his hair.
Hanson survived those first couple of seasons as Murray’s replacement, and then we blinked and Hanson is entering his 19th NFL season. One more year and he qualifies for a gold watch.
The man he replaced, Murray, was thought to be old. Murray kicked for the Lions from 1980-91—12 seasons. Then the Lions thought he was losing his power on kickoffs and the field goal accuracy was waning. So they released him, having drafted the kid Hanson.
Murray, by the way, left the Lions and kicked for nine more seasons, retiring in 2000 as a 44-year-old. Eddie even won a Super Bowl, with the 1993 Cowboys. Just like Errol Mann.
Errol Mann—there’s a name from the past. Mann was cut by the Lions in 1975 after kicking for them for years and he ended up with the 1976 Oakland Raiders—and Mann won a Super Bowl with them.
Funny how players win Super Bowls before and after playing for the Lions, but not while.
So it’s another training camp and Hanson is again entrenched as the Lions kicker, despite nursing an injury to his left, non-kicking leg. Last summer in camp he nursed an injury to his right, kicking leg.
Yet Hanson isn’t like some NFL players, who lose their jobs due to injury. Hanson is the Lions kicker even when he can’t kick. He’s had more job security than a Supreme Court Justice.
Which means Hanson will likely retire from pro football as a Lion. Not that there haven’t been some grumblings the past couple of seasons, when Hanson has had the audacity to actually, you know, miss a field goal attempt.
He missed several last year, but he didn’t miss them by much. It wasn’t like he was hooking them like a bad tee shot. Still, the footballs Hanson kicked last season didn’t find their way through the uprights and above the crossbar with the success rate we’ve been used to seeing from No. 4. The injury he suffered in training camp was presumed to be the culprit.
No matter. Hanson is back, as usual, and he’s the kicker, despite undergoing surgery earlier this month on his left leg.
The Lions brought in someone named Aaron Pettrey this year to handle kicking duties while Hanson recuperates. The Lions have brought in a number of kickers over the years, usually rookie free agents. They’ve done so as if they were trying to satisfy some sort of NFL Equal Opportunity Employer provision.
“Each team shall have two kickers in training camp.”
Pettrey’s chances of being the Lions kicker are off the board. Vegas wouldn’t touch it. He’s only with the Lions because they have to have someone kick during the exhibition games.
Every young kicker the Lions have invited to camp has come with the primary objective of hooking on with another NFL team. Hanson’s job has been as untouchable as Elliott Ness.
But a good, reliable kicker is hard to find—like a good, honest car mechanic. And when you find one, you don’t let him go. You don’t even look around for alternatives, almost for fear of jinxing what you have.
Murray became vilified in Detroit for missing the biggest kick of his career—the 1983 playoff game in San Francisco, when his 43-yarder at the final gun started wide right and stayed wide right. Had he connected, the Lions would have advanced to the NFC Championship Game.
Murray kicked for the Lions for eight more seasons, but never did he truly live down that miss against the 49ers.
Hanson hasn’t been in such a monumental situation in his 18 years with the Lions, mainly because the past nine of those have been spent in football purgatory.
Hanson would probably give his non-kicking leg to be in a position to miss a big kick.
But he shows up every year, on time, and with a smile on his face. Hanson has been through seven head coaches, a slew of special teams coaches, and more losses than you can shake a stick at. But he’s a Lion, always will be, and has never shown an inclination to jump ship.
He’s 40 years old and it’s becoming less and less possible to imagine any other skinny guy swinging his leg at held footballs in a Lions uniform.
Hanson has been a morsel of comfort food for a fan base that has had to choke down hospital grade cuisine for the past nine years.
But is the end near? Nobody can kick forever—not even Morten Anderson or Jan Stenerud or John Kasay—who’s still doing it for the Carolina Panthers, two months shy of his 41st birthday, the only kicker the Panthers franchise has ever employed.
All I know is that Hanson, just two seasons ago at age 38, went 21-for-22 in field goal attempts, including making a 56-yarder. Over his 18 seasons, he’s connected at a success rate of 81.8.
I have a hunch that last year’s 21-for-28 was an aberration, and that we’ll see a reliable, accurate Hanson once again in 2010. And we may see that for several more years.
Jason Hanson just has to keep kicking for the Lions. I was married one week after his first game with the team in 1992. He’s the only Lions kicker my marriage has ever known.
If he retires, I’ll have to start treating Mrs. Eno a whole lot nicer.
Retro Tuesday: Charles Rogers
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve been ranting in this space for over five years, having started “Out of Bounds” in April, 2005.
So I thought it would be kind of fun to step into the vault every Tuesday and drag out a delectable morsel from the past.
So “Retro Tuesday” will appear here every week—a blog post culled from the last five-plus years.
Today’s piece comes from August 2, 2006. The troubled Lions receiver Charles Rogers was struggling to make the team in his fourth season.
Enjoy!!
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(from August 2, 2006)
Rogers’ Career As A Lion On Life Support
Chuck Long. 1986’s #1 draft pick, a stud QB out of Iowa. A can’t miss kid, they said. Just you wait and see. We waited. We waited some more. Then the Lions could wait no longer, and drafted Rodney Peete out of USC.
Reggie Rogers. 1987’s #1 draft pick — a fleet-footed defensive end who could chase down running backs, sideline-to-sideline. But Reggie was involved in a car accident in which a person was killed, and in which Reggie himself was badly injured. There was a trial. Vehicular manslaughter. End of career.
Andre Ware. 1990’s #1 draft pick — a record-setting arm at the University of Houston. Drafted into the frenetic, ADD-like offense of the run-n-shoot that the Lions were playing around with. But Ware lacked one significant ingredient to being a serviceable NFL quarterback: the ability to throw the ball anywhere near an intended receiver. The poster boy of all bad Lions’ draft picks.
Juan Roque, 1996’s #1 draft pick — a six-foot-eight, 330 pound tackle out of Arizona State. Supposed to be a pillar of the offensive line for years to come. He ended up being simply a pillar — the inanimate kind. Career over in short order.
Stockar McDougle, 2000’s #1 draft pick — a six-foot-six tackle out of Oklahoma. If Wayne Fontes was still here, he would have said McDougle could “block out the sun.” Turns out Stockar couldn’t block his way out of a paper bag — parchment paper, even.
And now….
Charles Rogers, 2003’s #1 draft pick — an amazingly talented receiver out of Michigan State.
Rogers is perilously close to being lumped into the above group.
Already, training camp just six days old, there’s talk that Charlie Rogers is having trouble grasping the convoluted offensive schemes of new coordinator Mike Martz. He didn’t participate in one single play yesterday, the scuttlebutt is. Whispers are floating around questioning Rogers’ cranial capacity. Well, at least that’s different; they used to question his commitment, his work ethic, his durability.
Charles Rogers: not smart enough to play in the NFL?
Now they wonder whether Charlie Rogers has the smarts to be a competent NFL receiver.
If I had some dough to toss away on a gamble, I’d place some cash that says Rogers will no longer be a Lion when the regular season begins next month against the Seattle Seahawks at Ford Field. Not traded, not placed on injured reserve, or the PUP list. Just … cut.
Rogers and 2005’s #1 pick, Mike Williams, were mentioned as the two players who had to have perhaps the two best training camps on the entire team. Both are under the microscope of doubt and skepticism.
Neither is impressing, by all accounts, and it’s certainly fathomable that one of the two — doubtful both of them — will be released by the Lions within the month. My bet is on Rogers, because he’s had a couple more seasons in Detroit than Williams. Yes, the Lions would have to chow down on Rogers’ contract if they cut him, but as team president Matt Millen said last week, the club wouldn’t hesitate to do that if it was for the betterment of the program.
Rogers’ latest setback is yet another in a series. There was the freakish broken collarbone suffered midway through his rookie year in 2003, followed by the freakish broken collarbone suffered during the first series of the opening game in Chicago in 2004. Last year, Rogers was suspended for four games by the league for violating its substance abuse policy. Now the “he’s not very smart, after all” training camp.
Too much to overcome? Certainly too much to blame the Lions, should they cut him.
Time is running out for Charles Rogers in Detroit. Odds are.
After Just One Season, Delmas Best Lions DB In Years
Posted by: | CommentsThe words still rattle around in my noggin, some 20 years after they were spouted for public consumption by the hard-hitting, boisterous free safety for the Detroit Lions.
“Come out to see me on Monday Night Football,” Bennie Blades said into the camera, “and watch me hit Bo Jackson in the mouth!”
In my prior life as a producer and director for local cable television, part of my charge was to rustle up guests for our weekly sports talk show. I had no budget with which to work to secure such guests—just my charm and my wit. So you can imagine where that left us.
But I had spotted Blades at Fishbone’s in Greektown. It was St. Patrick’s Day, 1990. He had just finished his second season as the Lions’ paid assassin of the secondary—a member of Jimmy Johnson’s wild bunch at the University of Miami until being drafted by the Lions in 1988.
Fueled by some of the evening’s libations, I approached Blades, business card in hand, and asked him if he’d like to do our show sometime. He was gracious and willing.
Late in the summer, Blades graced our studios. The Lions’ schedule for 1990 had been released. There was a Monday night game slated for December against the (then) Los Angeles Raiders.
Bo Jackson was in his heyday of being the quintessential two-sport athlete—slugging homers for the Kansas City Royals in the summer and running over would-be tacklers for the Raiders in the fall.
It must have presented a quandary for the Kansas City sports fan, because the Chiefs were longtime, bitter rivals of their baseball superstar’s football team.
The NFL schedule would have Jackson and the Raiders invading the Pontiac Silverdome on national TV late in the 1990 season. Blades couldn’t wait.
So he made the pronouncement on our show, before the football season even started.
“Come out to see me on Monday Night Football and watch me hit Bo Jackson in the mouth!”
The Lions would lose that game to the Raiders—a wild, high-scoring affair. The Lions’ Barry Sanders, no slouch of a runner himself, scored early and often. Jackson and the Raiders countered. Back and forth it went, until the Lions collapsed into defeat in the fourth quarter. Typical.
Blades might have gotten a few hits in on Jackson that night. But the Lions lost anyway.
Bennie Blades was the last of a dying breed: that of the Lions defensive back who could change game plans and inject fear into opposing pass receivers.
Blades wanted to hit people, very badly. He played free safety as if the pass catchers had broken into his house.
Blades’ lineage as a Lions defensive back started in the 1950s, when Dick “Night Train” Lane patrolled the secondary and rarely made a tackle below the jaw line.
The Lions rosters of the 1950s and ‘60s were filled with top notch DBs.
There was Lane and Jimmy David and Yale Lary and Jack Christiansen and Dick LeBeau and Bruce Maher and Lem Barney and Wayne Rasmussen and Tommy Vaughn.
The 1970s and ‘80s saw Jimmy Allen and (still) Barney and James Hunter and Bruce McNorton. They weren’t all Hall of Famers or Pro Bowlers, but they were capable.
It was into this line that Bennie Blades fell when he was drafted by the Lions out of Miami in 1988.
When Blades left the Lions after the 1996 season (he retired after one season in Seattle), that lineage of capable defensive backs ended. The Lions have tried mightily since, but they haven’t been able to find “that guy” in the secondary.
Until now.
Louis Delmas is only a second-year player but he squawks and carries himself like a 10-year veteran. He played college ball at Western Michigan, which is about as known for pumping out All-Pro safeties as Yale is for quarterbacks.
Yet Delmas has become, after just one measly season, the best Lions’ defensive back since Bennie Blades. Says me.
“We have to play defense with personality, and (Delmas) provides that,” Lions coach Jim Schwartz told the media wonks earlier this week as training camp droned on.
Delmas was the topic du jour because he’s been little more than an anxious, chomping-at-the-bit observer during camp, thanks to a tender groin.
Forgive me, but he’s been like a caged Lion.
The Lions have had Delmas for just one season and already they and their fan base shudder to think of life without him. When news broke that Delmas’s groin injury might require season-ending surgery, the social networks and blogs were filled with mass hysteria.
I can see why.
Louis Delmas is the best thing to come down the pike in the Lions secondary in this century. He’s smart, physical, leads by example, and spices things up in the personality department. He makes plays. He helps give the Lions defense an identity.
The Lions, I suspect, are building around Delmas defensively just as they are around Matthew Stafford offensively. With all due respect to rookie DT Ndamukong Suh, Delmas is the quarterback of the defense. Suh is Delmas’s Calvin Johnson.
For all of the Lions’ inadequacies during the Matt “The Villain” Millen era, the defense has been the 400-lb. gorilla in the room. The Lions have been easier to score on than a Scrabble board. Opponents moved the ball down the field as if they were on a Sunday stroll.
Delmas, by himself, didn’t do a whole lot to stem that tide last season. But he plays a high-profile position in a high-throttle manner. He has no off switch. He should be the Lions’ free safety for years to come. He could be our Ronnie Lott, or at least the next Bennie Blades.
The Lions have tried aging veterans, supposed hot-shots, alleged big hitters (Kenoy Kennedy anyone?), and unheralded kids from the draft, all in an attempt over the years to ply together a secondary that at least achieves the level of respectable.
It’s all failed—a total, unmitigated disaster.
Bennie Blades was eventually joined by William White, Ray Crockett and Melvin Jenkins as the Lions’ secondary became better than average in the early-to-mid 1990s.
Louis Delmas is the new best thing back there—a player around whom to add more pieces, as the Lions did for Blades.
So come out to watch Delmas hit some people in the mouth!
Hall of Famer Spielman Was Born Too Late
Posted by: | CommentsWe did it all wrong, the way we watched Chris Spielman play football for the Detroit Lions.
How dare we enjoy Spielman’s eight seasons with the Lions under a Teflon roof with climate control!
How dare we have him play the game on phony grass, without a snowball’s chance in Hell of even a raindrop splatting onto his helmet?
How could we watch him in the lap of the Silverdome’s luxury, an ice-cold drink in one hand and a red hot in the other?
Spielman should have been crunching ball carriers and blockers on a muddy field under a sheet of rain, wearing a leather helmet and shoulder pads made of the latest Sears catalogues.
He should have been wearing a jersey made of wool, and shoes that went over his ankles. The football should have been more rounded.
The other team should have been from Canton, not Tampa.
The on-field officials should have been wearing all white with floppy hats, not stripes and baseball caps. They shouldn’t have been armed with penalty flags—just whistles.
The playing field should have literally been a gridiron, sans hash marks. The goalposts should have formed an “H.”
There shouldn’t have been an ambulance on standby. Instead, just a megaphone and a call for “Is there a doctor in the house?”
The fans should have worn fur coats and twirled noisemakers. And they should have gotten there by horse and buggy, or at least not until hand-cranking their automobile engine started. All the men should have been wearing hats, many smoking cigars.
There should have been no facemasks or elbow pads. The forward pass should have been considered radical. The drop kick should have been part of the playbook.
The games should have been heard on radio, not seen on television. The accounts should have been read from a newspaper, not the Internet.
The players should have played both offense and defense. There should have been one coach per team.
Red Grange should have been around for advice. Jim Thorpe, too.
Chris Spielman was born too late. Like by about 50 years. To say he was a throwback isn’t enough. Spielman wasn’t a throwback; he was a pro football player from the 1920s and ‘30s who somehow was transported to our time. Robert Zemeckis ought to give him a call for the next “Back to the Future” treatment.
It’s a good thing something called football was invented, because without it, I’m not sure what Chris Spielman would have done with himself. Maybe strap on a hard hat and ram himself into a brick wall.
Spielman played football as if it was his duty. He treated the sport with respect and was mindful of its history and tradition.
One time, he scored a touchdown at the Silverdome and rolled into the end zone, pounding the football into the turf, like they did when FDR was president.
Touch. Down.
They put Spielman, the great former linebacker from the Ohio State University, into the College Football Hall of Fame last week.
Considering Spielman last played a down of college ball 23 years ago, I’d say someone was asleep at the switch on this one.
He’s finally in, but damn them for being late, because Stefanie Spielman wasn’t around to enjoy it.
Spielman got everything he wanted on the football field by willing it to happen. Everything except an NFL Championship, that is.
But aside from that, Spielman cracked heads every Saturday, then every Sunday, with behemoths from the other side. If there was a problem, he’d take care of it on the field.
Then his wife Stefanie got sick with cancer.
Spielman quit pro football in 1996 to take care of her. No word on who took care of him, however. It had to kill him, to be so helpless for the first time ever.
“People say, ‘It’s a great thing that you’re doing,’ ” Chris Spielman said at the time.”I always say it would be a terrible thing if I didn’t.”
This was one opponent Spielman couldn’t beat into submission, but Stefanie proved to be as tough, if not more so, than her husband.
She gave breast cancer all it could handle. She was Joe Frazier and the cancer was Muhammad Ali. She’d win a round, and then cancer would take a few. It would land a big blow to the head, and Stefanie would counter with a jab to the face.
On and on it went for years.
Four times the cancer came and went. When she lost her hair to radiation, Chris Spielman shaved his head, too, in an act of solidarity and love.
But when it came back for the fifth time—cancer is as stubborn as the day is long—Stefanie didn’t have any more counter-punching left in her. She died last November, at age 42.
She had started an awareness group and became a spokesperson. The Spielmans became a sports couple to be admired and by whom to be inspired.
Her husband went back to the grind of pro football, but he didn’t last long. Chris Spielman retired in 1999 as a Cleveland Brown, his back and neck no longer in proper condition to withstand the head-on collisions that occurred every week.
So Stefanie wasn’t at last week’s ceremony in South Bend, Ind. At least, not physically.
Spielman was a Buckeye, and then he went to the Lions, which was like being plucked from the crystal waters of the Caribbean and being dunked into the swill of a swamp.
The losing killed him in Detroit. But there was just enough winning, eventually, to keep his hopes up. The Lions would make the playoffs, and then get drummed out in the first round, usually convincingly.
The last straw was the 58-37 thumping in Philadelphia in the first round in 1995—after the Lions had won their last seven games in a row to make the playoffs.
Spielman was 30 and he had had enough. He went to four Pro Bowls and led the Lions in tackles in all eight seasons he played for them, but after the playoff disaster in Philly, Spielman said the Lions were “spinning their wheels.”
He went to the Buffalo Bills for the 1996 season, and about a year after that, Stefanie was diagnosed.
Spielman probably won’t go into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The collegiate honor will have to suffice.
Ironic, really, because Spielman was an old soul, more in tune with the players who were in the NFL during its inception than those he played with and against.
We had him for eight years in Detroit. We watched him play on plastic grass in perpetual 72-degree weather that was dry and sans wind.
That was just plain wrong.
Lions Play Scared When it Comes to Haynesworth
Posted by: | CommentsAt the climax of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, as the Soviet ships turned around and headed home, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk uttered the famous words that bottom-lined what just happened, when the world was led to the brink of nuclear war but averted it at the 12th hour.
“We just went eyeball-to-eyeball with the Soviets,” Rusk said, “and they blinked.”
The Soviets didn’t have the temerity to push any further.
The Detroit Lions, some 47 years and change later, went eyeball-to-eyeball with the prospects of acquiring defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth. And the Lions blinked.
The official team colors for the Lions are Honolulu Blue and Silver. You’d better add yellow to the scheme.
The Lions, according to a source identified by NFL.com, are no longer interested in the huge talent and sometimes headache Haynesworth, who the Washington Redskins might be willing to trade.
The source says that Lions GM Martin Mayhew acknowledges Haynesworth’s abilities and that those abilities could work wonders with No. 2 overall draft pick Ndamukong Suh on the Lions’ interior defensive front.
But, the source added, “(The Lions) don’t want any negative influences around” Suh.
Yellow management. A chicken excrement way of doing things.
The Lions, still talent deficient despite another draft and a busy off-season, looked at the potentially dominant Haynesworth and shook their head no—all because they’re afraid.
I’ve supported Mayhew from Day One, when he fleeced Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys out of a No. 1 draft choice for WR Roy Williams way back in October 2008. He’s been bold, aggressive, and has exhibited personnel savvy that defies his being an underling to Matt Millen for so many years.
But not this time. I can’t go with Mayhew on this one. Mayhew regressed, playing try-not-to-lose poker instead of the trying-to-win kind.
An upper echelon team, one that’s elite, can maybe afford to pass on a guy like Haynesworth and cite his track record of being a prima donna. They can afford to be a tad more picky.
The Lions don’t have that luxury. They need talented football players, first and foremost. First you get them here, then you figure out how to deal with them.
I thought that the history Haynesworth has with Lions head coach Jim Schwartz from the pair’s days in Tennessee would provide the final push over the hump, and that the Lions would actively pursue a trade for big Albert.
But I was wrong. The Lions not only blinked, they lost their nerve. They kept their chips and folded.
The Lions have won 33 games in the past nine years. If it wasn’t so painstakingly sad, it would be frighfully funny.
Thirty-three wins in nine years, and they’re going to pass on acquiring a player who could make their front four one of the best in pro football?
They’re cowards.
This is pro sports, not college. Losing isn’t tolerated in pro sports. This is America, where losing is despicable. And in no other sport is losing as horrible as it is in professional football.
All the planning, all the film sessions. All the strategy, all the practicing. For six days this goes on every week. Coaches work 20-hour days. Players work themselves into a rabid froth from Monday thru Saturday. On Sunday (or Monday) there is an accounting.
You play 60 minutes and when it’s over and you’re on the wrong end of the score, it’s damn near disgusting.
Nothing is better than winning a pro football game, and nothing is worse than losing one.
The Lions are bottom feeders, and that means needing the intestinal fortitude to take risks in order to return to respectability.
By taking themselves out of the bidding for Haynesworth, they’re handing out indictments all over the team.
They’re saying that Sc hwartz can’t handle a sometimes-headache player—one that he’s coached before, no less. They’re saying that Suh, so praised for his maturity and for being a quote-unquote good kid, is easily manipulated. And they’re saying that the teammate support structure is broken.
They’re afraid of bringing in Albert Haynesworth.
Guess what? They don’t have that option.
You can’t win 33 games in nine years and play scared when it comes to improving your roster.
The Oakland Raiders—the old version, not this New Coke recipe that plays at being Raiders today—made a mint and won some Super Bowls by signing and trading for some of the league’s most notorious miscreants.
If you needed a career resuscitated, if you were a player who was being figuratively blackballed, you told your agent to give the Raiders a call.
The Raiders of the 1970s and most of the 1980s were a bunch of vagabonds. They were a snarling team made up largely of men who played with chips on their shoulders and with hate and vengeance on their minds and encircling their hearts.
They were like the team of prisoners in “The Longest Yard” and all their opponents were the prison guards.
The Raiders could only have been owned by Al Davis—before he started losing it upstairs. Davis prowled the field before the game with his sunglasses and slicked back hair and bling and he wore black and you were tempted to ask him where they buried Jimmy Hoffa.
His players were of that image—irreverant, sneering, distasteful.
Just win, baby.
That’s what the Raiders did, with their miscreants and cast-offs and has-beens.
Jim Plunkett won not one, but two Super Bowls with the Raiders, and he did it on bad legs and with a passing arm that needed two throws to make it 50 yards. Plunkett was a two-time NFL loser, with the Patriots and the 49ers, when the Raiders got their dirty mitts on him. Then look what happened.
The Lions could have had Haynesworth at a relatively decent price, since the Redskins would be picking up most of the tab. They could have added a guy who, combined with Suh, might have made Detroit go crazy.
Haynesworth and Suh, together, could own Detroit.
What do they think, he’s going to come here and act like a goofball on principle?
Elite teams can afford to think like that.
Bottom feeders like the Lions need good football players, not good people.
Sometimes the two are mutually exclusive, unfortunately. I will grant you that.
I want a team that wants to win—not one that’s afraid to lose.
The Lions passed on Albert Haynesworth.
They lost their nerve. Shame on them.
Pallone’s Baseball Life a Constant 0-2 Count
Posted by: | CommentsHow many dreams come true in Pittsburgh?
On Friday, April 6, 1979, a 27-year-old man from Waltham, Massachusetts crouched behind Pirates catcher Ed Ott and prepared to call balls and strikes in Three Rivers Stadium in his first game as a big league umpire.
Whether the first pitch from Bert Blyleven was a ball or a strike has long been forgotten.
What is irrefutable from that day is this: Dave Pallone pulled his mask over his face, and he left it there for the next 10 seasons.
Pallone was a big league umpire but he wasn’t, in the eyes of some. He was an opportunist or he was a scab. He was part of the fraternity yet he wasn’t.
You think that’s some confliction? You have no idea.
Pallone, for 10 big league seasons, was two people.
There was the tough, talented umpire Pallone, who toiled in the minor leagues for eight years before getting his chance in the wake of the infamous big league umpires strike of 1979. There was the guy who wouldn’t be shoved out, despite atrocious and reprehensible treatment by his so-called brethren who looked at him and saw scab.
Then there was the “other” Dave Pallone—the one who told bold-faced lies regularly. The one who didn’t want anyone to know what he was really up to. The one who lived in daily fear of being found out.
That Dave Pallone was gay.
Actually, both Pallones were gay. But only one of them let anyone know it. The other lived as a straight man, pretending to have girlfriends and telling illogical falsehoods at even the most innocuous questions.
“Hey, what did you do over the weekend?”
Pallone might have lied—might have given you a whopper of a fish story, to keep himself cloistered in the closet. He might have rattled off a laundry list of things he had done—some involving members of the opposite sex. And all would have been a bunch of horsepucky.
Pallone led that double life for 10 big league seasons (1979-88).
Dave Pallone today
“You lived in daily fear that you’d be found out,” Pallone was telling me over the phone, his easy accent still tinged with New England.
Pallone is 58 today. He’s a diversity trainer and motivational speaker. He preaches a message: always respect yourself, and others.
Ironic, because for years, Dave Pallone tried to run away from who he was. And he didn’t always respect himself.
“I knew I was different,” he says. “But it wasn’t until my first sexual encounter with another man, in Puerto Rico when I was 25, that I knew for sure.”
It was a bittersweet discovery. Pallone had finally solved his mystery, but he didn’t dare tell anyone.
Besides, there was a career dream to pursue.
Pallone told me that he was watching Curt Gowdy announce the MLB “Game of the Week” one Saturday afternoon, circa 1969. Sometime during the broadcast, Gowdy read a promo, soliciting young men to consider becoming umpires.
“It was like he was talking to me,” Pallone said. “From then, I wanted to be an umpire.”
His sexual orientation providing a constant, confusing backdrop, Pallone set out to be a baseball arbiter. He did the bush leagues and rode the buses, just like the players in the low minors. He ate the bad food and slept in the dirty motels. He was just like the guys with the gloves and bats—he was waiting to be discovered.
For his umpiring.
After the Puerto Rico encounter, Pallone would have been mortified to have been discovered as anything else.
The double life was on.
Pallone kept getting promoted for his umpiring. By 1978, he was entrenched in the International League—a Triple-A circuit just one step below the bigs.
Then the big league umpires went on strike.
It began in spring training, 1979, and there was no agreement by the time the regular season dawned.
Pallone was one of the umpires plucked from the minors to fill in.
It was his chance to fulfill his dream of rendering judgment on a big league diamond. He knew there’d be fallout—especially when the strike was settled and Pallone was one of the handful of umps who stayed.
“Scab” is an awful, sneer-inducing word. But in organized labor parlance, it fit Pallone like a glove. By accepting a full-time assignment to stay in the majors, Pallone in essence became a union buster. Of all the lines a man can cross, a picket line is among the most perilous.
When the “real” umpires returned after their labor dispute was settled, Pallone hunkered down. He knew it would likely be Hell for him.
He was wrong.
It was worse.
“There was absolutely no camaraderie,” Pallone said. “If I asked for help, like on a checked swing, they’d turn their back to me. They wouldn’t even walk out onto the field with me.”
This childish, overtly disrespectful treatment continued, Pallone estimates, for at least his first three seasons in the majors. It got better after that, but for his entire 10 years in the big leagues, he was never truly accepted—although Pallone’s three years spent on a crew with Bob Engel and Paul Runge (1983-85) were the least stressful.
And oh yeah, there was that double life thing happening, too.
It was so ironic—Pallone was ostracized, but not for what he feared would be the reason: the revelation that he was gay. If his fellow umpires only knew!
Dave Pallone kept wearing his mask, kept looking over his shoulder. At any moment he’d be found out. How long could a man keep such a secret?
Pallone made an analogy for the straight man. He likened it to being at a perpetual party, drinking underage, and living in constant fear that someone would find out that the ID you had was fake.
Yet Pallone pulled it off, year after year. Not once did he think of quitting—not when the other umpires treated him like excrement. Not when paranoia threatened to engulf him.
“This was my dream,” Pallone explained. “I worked hard to be a big league umpire. I wasn’t going to be driven out.”
Until the day that he was.
It wasn’t true, Pallone said then and says now of a story that was reported in 1988. It wasn’t true that he was part of some prostitution ring involving young men and boys. The facts agreed with him. The law absolved him.
But the damage was done. He had finally been “outed” as a gay man.
Major League Baseball paid him to leave. Never before had one of their men in blue been a confirmed homosexual. After some soul-searching, Pallone took the money and ran.
Ten years and out.
“Sometimes I wish I hadn’t taken the money, and I had fought (baseball) in the courts,” Pallone told me. “But that would have been very costly and taken a very long time.”
He came out with a book, “Behind the Mask: My Double Life in Baseball,” in 1990. Shortly after leaving the game, he started on the speaking circuit.
Today, Pallone estimates that his speaking engagements are “60/40—60 percent college campuses, 40 percent corporate stuff.”
He talks of diversity and the respect thing and will lighten things up with some funny anecdotes about baseball.
Pallone and his partner, Keith, live in Colorado.
He doesn’t have to lie about that anymore.
(Dave’s website is www.davepallone.com)
Mayhew Commits Yet Another Robbery at NFL Draft
Posted by: | CommentsNFL general managers, beware: you can’t stop Martin Mayhew, you can only hope to contain him.
Mayhew, the Lions’ football brainiac, reminds me of those chess experts who can play multiple opponents at once, because he’s staying one move ahead of his brethren.
His latest heist was the trade he made last night during the first round of the NFL Draft, when everyone thought Mayhew’s work was done with the selection of Nebraska DT Ndamukong Suh with the second overall pick.
Mayhew’s never done. You can’t drop your guard for one second with this guy. He’ll fleece you in broad daylight—in front of your family, your friends, your fans. He doesn’t bother to wear a mask. None of the great bandits did—just the amateurs who are afraid of being caught.
Mayhew obviously couldn’t care less who sees his face. He’s Jesse James, Clyde Barrow and John Dillinger, all rolled into one.
Mayhew picked Suh, as pretty much expected, then he went back to his chess board.
Later in the evening, the announcement came: the Lions had swapped with the Minnesota Vikings—a division rival, mind you—so that the Detroiters could get themselves a second first round pick. They bumped themselves up four picks, from 34th to 30th, and nabbed California running back Jahvid Best.
Mayhew is leaving a trail of victims in his wake.
It all started in October 2008, when Mayhew was on the job only a few weeks, when he played coy and gave misdirection about wanting to trade WR Roy Williams at the upcoming trade deadline.
His patience and savvy fooled Jerry Jones into surrendering a first round pick for the underachieving Williams.
It was then that I thought the Lions might have something special with this Martin Mayhew guy.
And it wasn’t beginner’s luck. Mayhew first perfected the art of the low-risk, high yield move. Now he’s flat out picking other GM’s pockets in full view of everyone.
In between there was his fine 2009 draft, from which the Lions got several starters.
I get the feeeling that Mayhew loves this stuff. Some executives become intoxicated by the art of the deal. Pistons GM Jack McCloskey comes to mind.
But Mayhew isn’t making trades and signing free agents just for the sake of it. His every crime has designs. He’s his own, one-man Mafia.
The impressive thing is that Mayhew seems to have this knack for making the other teams see things through his prism. I don’t know how he does it—charm, guile, intimidation—but he gets what he wants because he brainwashes the other guy into thinking that it’s for his own good, too.
Mayhew is the mugger who convinces you that you didn’t need all that cash and jewelry after all.
And the NFL’s GMs have to still suffer through a couple more days with Mayhew at the draft. They’d better watch their wallets—not that it would do them any good.
They say 40 is the new 30. Mayhew is the new Joe Dumars.
Remember when we gushed about Dumars? I was guilty of it. I was hardly alone.
Dumars is out; Mayhew is all the rage now.
Someone mentioned to Mayhew recently that he and the Lions have had a pretty good off-season.
“You don’t know if you have a good off-season until you play the season,” Mayhew said he responded.
Gee, all that and he has common sense and wisdom, too?
And to think that he served under Matt Millen for all those years. Millen was the goose who laid the Golden Egg (Mayhew) and no one knew it until the goose was run out of town.
The Lions had a good draft yesterday. Already. They’re Barry Sanders with two carries for 80 yards and 55 minutes still to play.
Pity the rest of the league.
Lions Missed on Rogers in More Ways than One
Posted by: | CommentsSomehow, the Lions missed it.
Somehow, it escaped their attention that the young stud receiver had some serious issues off the field.
It should have been all there, had the team done their due diligence. The implications, today, are that a young man two years shy of 30 might be a complete, total waste.
Charlie Rogers beamed that April day in 2003, holding up a Honolulu Blue jersey with the symbolic No. 1 running down its front. The Detroit Lions baseball cap rested on his mixed up, pot-addled head.
Lions President Matt Millen fired another blank.
Millen’s team, hard up for a serious talent that could catch passes from its young quarterback, Joey Harrington, wanted Michigan State’s Rogers so badly it hurt. The Lions drafted second overall. The Cincinnati Bengals, with the No. 1 overall pick off the board, were rumored to want hotshot QB Carson Palmer of USC.
Rogers would be the Lions’, after all.
There was some drama, though. The Lions didn’t submit the index card with Rogers’ name on it right away when their turn came to pick. They dilly-dallied a bit. Maybe another player was in the mix at the last moment—or a trade was in the works.
No.
The index card was handed to Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, who read Rogers’ name.
There was the usual hooting and hollering. Some of it could be heard at the draft in New York all the way from Detroit.
Lions fans wanted Rogers, too—for the most part. He was local, growing up in Saginaw. He was terrific in college. The football need only be thrown in his general direction and Charlie would do the rest. There was no telling what he could do in the NFL.
But the Lions missed it.
They missed the serious character flaw Rogers had. They missed it in the pre-draft interviews with him. They missed it when they looked at his college career in East Lansing. They missed it, or they refused to acknowledge it. Take your pick.
But Charlie Rogers was a Lion and that was all that mattered. Apparently.
In fairness, you can do all the prep work in the world—interviews until everyone turns blue, watching film until your eyes get bleary. The NFL Draft is the biggest sports crap shoot outside of Las Vegas.
The Lions, though, missed on Charlie Rogers so badly that their pick of him is likely among the 10 worst ever made in the history of the league.
Rogers caught two touchdown passes on Opening Day of his rookie year. One of them was a beauty—stretching out so that he was parallel to the turf, snaring the football in midair.
Turns out it wasn’t the first time Rogers went flying. Nor would it be the last.
Charlie Rogers was a pothead, and the Lions missed it. His reefer madness had been going on for quite some time at MSU, as it turned out. He was smoking weed and exercising poor judgment on a regular basis. The Detroit Free Press dug up the story: Rogers had failed drug tests in college. He was irresponsible and sometimes lazy on the football field.
But he had talent. Oh, but did he have talent. Rogers might have been the best pure pass catcher to ever play for the Spartans. He had hands like Velcro and the acrobatics of a circus performer.
The Lions drooled over him. Millen, never one to do all his homework, whether it came to draft picks or coaching hires, envisioned Rogers and Harrington forming a duet that would dazzle the league.
But Rogers broke his collarbone less than halfway through his rookie season. In Year Two, he suffered a very similar injury in the season’s first game.
In Year Three, Rogers failed an NFL drug test for a third time. He was suspended for four games.
It took the Lions that long to find out that their supposed prize receiver was a pothead—something that had been going on since high school.
It took another year before they realized that he wasn’t too bright, either.
In 2006, the Lions had a new offensive coordinator.
Mike Martz arrived in town with a three-ring binder bursting with pages of passing plays. He was a mad general of aerial attacks. There was something not quite right about him, but we couldn’t put our finger on it. He was kind of strange. Yet we were glad he was with the Lions. Perhaps he could help revive a boring, popgun offense.
Martz started throwing his myriad of plays at the receivers and one of them was lagging behind: the talented pothead Charlie Rogers.
Rogers plodded through training camp that summer. He wasn’t impressing Martz in the least. There were whispers that Rogers lacked the mental capacity to grasp Martz’s complicated offense.
The Lions cut Charlie Rogers at the end of training camp in 2006.
He never played a down of football after that.
His short-lived NFL career consisted of 15 total games in three seasons. The Lions sued him for breach of contract after they learned of his drug consumption. They may as well have sued a stone.
Today, Rogers is being sucked further and further into the abyss.
He’s alone, it seems. His behavior has been erratic, to put it kindly. He keeps getting arrested. Twice, the police have found him passed out in his car, under the influence of drugs or alcohol—most recently on January 5 of this year. He was accused of assault and battery on a woman he knew in 2008; the charges were later dropped.
Rogers’ life is in complete disarray. He has no talent beyond football. He isn’t very smart. He’s only 28 years old and he’s perilously close to being a total waste.
That’s sad enough, but what’s worse is that Charlie Rogers doesn’t appear to have a support system; no one has taken him under their wing. No one has stepped forward and linked their name to his in the form of help. He has no advocate, no spokesperson.
He’s alone.
And that’s what is saddest of all when it comes to Charlie Rogers. He had all sorts of “friends” when he was making the big bucks and flitting around as a hotshot NFL receiver.
Now he has no one.
If he does, then I apologize. But those folks aren’t doing a very good job with him, apparently. Rogers isn’t getting any better—he’s getting much, much worse.
Ryan Leaf, the quarterback drafted from Washington State in 1998 who might be the biggest NFL Draft bust of all time, was just sentenced for some felonies involving drugs.
So you never truly know what you’re getting when you hand that index card to the commissioner on draft day.
But the Lions should have caught the Rogers thing before they drafted him. They were so blinded by the kid’s talent that they failed to see his foibles.
Now look at him.
Friday’s Favs: The Best of “Enotes”
Posted by: | Comments(Note: every Friday I’ll post a favorite rant from the archives)
from September 28, 2009
Drive-Through
They say you can’t go back home again. That, and you can’t go to the drive-in movies again. At least not with as much convenience.
They used to sprout all over the land—the drive-in movie theaters of America.
They died a slow death, the drive-ins did. Their big screens stood above the horizon like tombstones in a cemetery, unused and garish reminders of a day gone by. Then, even the tombstones got knocked down, leaving only weeds growing around the feet of the speaker stands.
There’s a wonderful photo that first appeared in LIFE Magazine, taken in the 1950s when “The Ten Commandments” was a new release motion picture. The photo was shot with a wide-angle lens and showed a typical drive-in movie theater of the day.
Charlton Heston’s Moses filled the huge screen, during the scene where he parts the Red Sea. In the foreground are all the cars—hundreds of them—parked, following the action.
The drive-in was THE place to be in the 1950s and ’60s.
It was a place to hang out—to be seen as well as to see movies. Kids would sneak buddies in via the trunk—back when tickets were sold individually. Then the theaters wised up and just charged per car.
Young, awkward Romeos and Juliets snuggled in the front seat—this was when lots of cars had bench seats—and had their first hand-holding and cuddling (or more) experience.
And let’s not forget the refreshment stands and their between-movie ads. For a fun-filled trip down memory lane, go to YouTube and type in the right search string and enjoy.
Our daughter’s favorite is the dancing hot dog that jumps into its bun. Trust me, it exists.
As a kid, our drive-in (back when everyone had their own neighborhood drive-in) was the Algiers, at the northeast corner of Wayne Road and Warren Road, in Westland. There’s a McDonald’s there now—as if.
I’d get into my jammies and bring a pillow and I was ready to go—sure to be out like a light when we got home. I have vague memories of my dad carrying me from the car to the house, like a kidnap victim who’s been chloroformed.
The photo that first appeared in LIFE Magazine (that’s Charlton Heston as Moses in “The Ten Commandments”)
But I’m proud to say that my wife and I (she grew up on drive-ins, too) passed down the tradition of watching movies from the car to our daughter. Most of the open-air theaters were long gone, of course, but there was always the Ford-Wyoming.
The F-W (it’s still there) has nine screens, spread out over two corners of Ford Road and Wyoming in Dearborn. And that’s where we’d head, when we wanted to scratch that itch.
Our little girl loved it. She’d be in jammies, too, and the movies were the usual Disney/animated stuff, or something like “The Incredible Hulk” or one of the “Batman” flicks.
In 2002, after having already made a verbal commitment to take the gang to the drive-in, I was caught in a dilemma.
It was the same night, turns out, as Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals—the Red Wings and Carolina Hurricanes.
No worries. Along came the earphones, the portable TV, and the AC/DC adapter. All with Mrs. Eno’s approval, of course.
The movie? I couldn’t tell you what it was. But the game went into triple overtime before Igor Larionov ended it. I must not have been alone, because when Igor scored, I could hear hoots and hollers from other vehicles. By this time, wife and daughter are out cold, so I had to do one of those “silent” cheers—when your mouth makes the requisite contortions of screaming, but no sound comes out.
It’s one of my more memorable drive-in experiences.
Aside from the F-W, you’re mostly out of luck if you’re looking for a drive-in theater nowadays. The Silverdome teased us with some drive-in action in its parking lot after the Lions moved out, but that fizzled out quickly.
There was just something about watching a movie in your car. Not sure what it was. Something about the gravel lot and the tinny metal speakers and the too-far-away refreshment stand.
Maybe we’ll pile back into the jalopy and set out for Ford and Wyoming again, one of these nights.
I could go for a kielbasa-sized dill pickle for three bucks.
Offense Close to Being OK, But Lions Better Off Focusing on Defense
Posted by: | CommentsIn producing a list of the all-time great NFL quarterbacks, anyone who knows a lick about pro football wouldn’t have Terry Bradshaw anywhere near the top. A sane-minded individual wouldn’t put Bob Griese up there, either.
The list would include, in the upper echelon, Francis Tarkenton and Danny Marino and Jim Kelly. Hell, probably even Dan Fouts.
You wouldn’t risk being portrayed as a buffoon by including Trent Dilfer or Mark Rypien. Or even Doug Williams, with all due respect.
Yet Bradshaw is a four-time Super Bowl winner. Griese won it twice. Dilfer and Rypien have champion’s rings. Same with Williams.
But Bradshaw had an average arm and didn’t possess any extraordinary skills. Griese was mobile and precise but not overpowering in stature. Dilfer was mediocre, Rypien serviceable. Williams was big and strong but erratic.
Now compare that to the skill level of Tarkenton and Marino and Kelly and Fouts.
Bradshaw and Dilfer, especially, played on teams glorified for their defenses. Same, to a degree, goes for Rypien and Williams. Bradshaw, for example, would sometimes only attempt 10-12 passes a game, because his punishing running game and the abusive “Steel Curtain” defense didn’t require much more from the offense than 14 points a game for the Steelers to win.
Now you have some ammo the next time someone tries to con you into thinking that defense doesn’t win pro football championships.
It’s been relegated to cliche, and painted as a myth; fool’s gold, even.
Yes, it can be hackneyed, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
The Lions had a scary offense in 1995, and for a change I mean that it was scary for the opponents, not the fans.
There was the whirling dervish, jitterbug running back Barry Sanders looming in the backfield on every snap. The wideouts were the highly competent Herman Moore and Brett Perriman. Johnnie Morton was a solid No. 3 receiver. The tight end was the promising David Sloan. One-hit wonder Scott Mitchell slung the ball to them, to the tune of over 300 completions and more than 4,000 yards.
The Lions ended the ‘95 season with a seven-game winning streak, finishing 10-6 and ready to take on the world.
But they couldn’t even handle Philadelphia.
The Eagles torched the Lions’ defense in the playoffs to the tune of a 58-37 demolishing that wasn’t nearly as “close” as that score would indicate.
The trouble with that 1995 Lions team of the dazzling offense wasn’t scoring 30 points; it was trying to keep the other guys from scoring 31.
Some normally sound thinking ink-stained wretches around town, like the Free Press’ Michael Rosenberg, have tried to make the case that loading up on offense is the quickest way for the Lions to attain respectability. That may be true; in fact, it may even be likely.
But if the Lions want to kick through the glass ceiling of respectability, and reach for championship sky, they must repair their broken defense.
Coach Jim Schwartz has buttered his bread on the defensive side of the ball all of his coaching life, just about. So it should have been no surprise that he was camped out on the driveway of DT Kyle Vanden Bosch, not WR Nate Burleson, when free agency began at 12:01 this morning.
Literally, camped out.
“I could be anywhere in the world right now,” Schwartz told Vanden Bosch via cell phone as the coach’s car idled in his former pupil’s drive. “But I’m here because you’re the guy I want.”
This is according to Vanden Bosch, who related the episode to a Tennessee radio station.
Schwartz knows that if his team is going to blow past respectability in the left lane of the NFL freeway and head for the Super Bowl, he needs the horses on defense. It’s also why the Lions, despite the signing of free agent Burleson, seem to be focused more on “D,” trading for Cleveland DT Corey Williams and targeting a DT with their No. 2 overall draft pick.
Safety Louis Delmas, coming off a strong rookie season, is much like QB Matthew Stafford. Just as Stafford needs a running game and blocking and a second option to go with WR Calvin Johnson, so does Delmas need pieces to the defensive puzzle.
Delmas needs a pass rush. He needs cornerbacks. He needs solid linebacking play. I have a feeling Delmas is a player that the Lions will build around, defensively. So give him some help.
Enter Vanden Bosch, and Williams, and probably the No. 2 overall pick.
If the Dolphins had given Dan Marino, during his 16-year career, a running back and a halfway decent defense, Miami would have been Super Bowl champs again, and maybe more than once.
Rosenberg and others who think like him are on the right track; the Lions of 2009 appeared to be closer to respectability on offense than anywhere else. And if 9-7 and 10-6 is OK with you, then God bless you.
But if you want a parade down Woodward Avenue honoring the Honolulu Blue and Silver in the near future, don’t forget the D.