Is It Time for A QB Change?

[Karnage84]

On 11/26/2021 at 9:38 PM, LionArkie said:

Ok. We won’t address the mess left to Holmes and Co and we will only start from the roster they had and the deals they made after their hiring. I wont consider the rebuild, which isnt fair, but I can only speculate on what their future plans are. So this is how i will break it down.

Holmes - 70%. The offense is the biggest issue of this team and specifically the WR group. Holmes inherited Stafford, Jones, Galloday. No contract was offered to the two WRs, Stafford was traded. There goes the offense. Without Stafford over the last 10 years the lions are 0-15. Guess what? We’re winless again. He was familiar with Goff so he should have known what Goff needed and he failed. This offense is Holmes work. The Trinity Benson trade, I’ve already b*****d about this enough. But when you need draft capital and WR and you trade capital for a guy who can’t get off the Lions practice squad at WR that is an epic fail. His free agent moves at wr were for a guy who sucked and a guy who is injured. Guess what we got? A guy who sucks and a guy who is injured. Who would have guessed?

 

20% - Jared Goff. This guy is tying campbells hands as he is not the type of qb who makes others around him better. If you have sucky receivers, he’s going to suck. That’s Goff. Its not his fault he has sucky receivers, but work on bettering your progressions. If you can’t, no one can help you.

10% - Dan Campbell. Last year the defense cost us wins. This year it is keeping us in games with less talent. We can say it’s because of Glenn and Pleasant, but they came here because of Campbell. He deserves credit there. The team seems to like playing for him and he hasn’t lost the team yet. That’s impressive. He took over play calling duties, but there are reports that Goff and Lynn can’t get along and that’s why dc took over.of course those rumors are being denied. So who knows. So if Goff who is under performing, and was brought in by Holmes, I’m not going to put that on Campbell. I think he’s trying to get through to his qb, and yet has no confidence in him. That’s a tough balancing act. I dont blame him in calling a run on 3 and 23. If you run for 3.5 ypc and throw for 2.6 yards you have a better chance on converting with the run on this team. It sucks, but we don’t have play makers. That’s this team.

0% - Anthony Lynne unless he started some feud with Goff, I don’t see how he is responsible. He called our only 30 point game this year and he has to work within the parameters of what Holmes provides and what Campbell wants to do. So I dont put anything on him at this point.

I won’t address injuries because that wasn’t part of the question. 

This team is exactly what I thought they would be. I think I said several times it would be between 0-3 wins.

Quintricia stripped this team of most of the talent, and then Holmes shipped off the rest and tbh, I really don’t like the return we received compared to what Carolina offered. I get Stafford wanted out, but we were not under any obligation to trade him. By doing so, it made us much worse for the 2021 season.

im going to say it now, we will have the number 1 pick for the next 3 years.

I actually didn't hear about the Lynn/Goff rumours, which adds an interesting wrinkle.

If this is actually true, who do you think lasts longer on the Lions - Goff or Lynn?

I hear you on the WR situation. The Benson trade didn't make a ton of sense, so I am in agreement with you there. I will give @diehardlionfan credit on his comment about how we don't know what Holmes tried to do/who declined to come here. A bad Lions team with a completely new regime change and Jared Goff as the QB is not exactly going to sell itself. Unless we were willing to overpay on a mid-tier FA to come here, it was likely an uphill battle. It's hard to pin that entirely on Holmes and I don't really think it would be fair to do so.

I do think that we have seen the team battle hard for this staff and as a result, there will be players who will want to come play here and try to right the ship. The fact that we've been responsible for a lot of the losses ourselves with dumb mistakes instead of just being beaten is encouraging. If we can nearly defeat generally accepted "good" teams with significantly lesser talent and a developing coaching staff, we should expect to see some W's in the future with more talent on the roster and experience in the coaching staff. 

We have a coach with a 6 year contract. Holmes has a 5 year deal. That should be enough for us to recognize the ownership sees this as a lengthy rebuild. We knew year 1 was going to be rough. There was some optimism (myself included) based on the schedule and the expectation that the defense should improve and as a result, directly impact our W totals. I didn't expect the offense to take this much of a step back. I figured we could win 3-5 games at most. 

[Karnage84]

16 minutes ago, Sllim Pickens said:

When salary cap and long term contracts are part of the issue, you have to put some on the previous regime.  Just like your example of politics, the state of affairs when you step into your position will have a huge impact on how quickly or drastically things turn around.  We had a lot of bad contracts, we had Stafford ask for a trade and with the dead cap from those bad contracts and the trade, we couldn't also keep Golladay (not sure he would have helped much being hurt all the time anyways).  So yes decisions from a prior regime are impacting this team.  Two years from now that is no excuse, but it is a major impact right now.  

The Stafford trade changed the timeline and direction of this team.  The dead money (how can you win when paying 50M to people not on the team?) crushed us and didn't allow for many moves.  That meant instead of a quick rebuild, we had to completely reset.  I do think Holmes could have done better at WR in free agency, and in fact still think there are guys out there that have to be better than what we have so he gets a decent amount of blame IMO, at least more than DHLF is giving him.  

 

I'm not saying that we don't/can't place some of that on the prior regime. There's no question that some of the moves they made have hampered the team. What I am saying is that they aren't here any longer. It is what it is. However, there are decisions being made by people not named Matt Patricia or Bob Quinn now. The people making those decisions have to control what they can control and make the best of the situation moving forward. What I find tends to happen is that far too often a previous regime - whether in sports or in politics - is an easy target to lay blame on why something didn't work (and rarely are credited for when something does work under a new regime). In year 3 of the Holmes/Campbell experience are we still going to come back to "Quintricia" if things aren't working out? Probably. 

I think the Benson trade is what has me not entirely in lockstep with DHLF on his stance with Holmes. I do think he had an uphill battle to sell FA's and why pay a guy big money for a 3-4 year rebuild who isn't going to be a major contributor when the team is built and (hopefully) winning. On the other side, to give up draft assets for a guy that was likely going to be a cut candidate and isn't making a dent doesn't make sense. 

[LionArkie]

5 hours ago, Karnage84 said:

I actually didn't hear about the Lynn/Goff rumours, which adds an interesting wrinkle.

If this is actually true, who do you think lasts longer on the Lions - Goff or Lynn?

https://www.freep.com/story/sports/nfl/lions/2021/11/23/anthony-lynn-jared-goff-relationship-detroit-lions/8740232002/

 

I think Lynn will be the odd man out.  I think we will be with Goff next year and possibly longer if he signs a cheaper contract. I think he won't be evaluated to harshly this year due to the WR issue. Whether we think he should be judged more harshly is a different argument.

[Karnage84]

3 minutes ago, LionArkie said:

https://www.freep.com/story/sports/nfl/lions/2021/11/23/anthony-lynn-jared-goff-relationship-detroit-lions/8740232002/

 

I think Lynn will be the odd man out.  I think we will be with Goff next year and possibly longer if he signs a cheaper contract. I think he won't be evaluated to harshly this year due to the WR issue. Whether we think he should be judged more harshly is a different argument.

If Lynn isn't the issue but Goff's contract stops the team from just outright taking a side (and axing either of them) I'd rather hold onto Lynn and work on finding Goff's replacement. Campbell still really needs the experience of a HC in his ear as he's clearly still learning on the job. If Goff isn't the long-term answer, having an experienced OC for a young/developmental QB surely should help. As a couple people have posted, Campbell isn't known for being an X's and O's guy. 

[Sllim Pickens]

If there are relationship issues with Goff and Lynn, I would say that maybe Goff is the issue.  He had a bad relationship with McVay and now Lynn.  Maybe he is just more ego than his talent says he should have and the coaches don't like it.  Seems odd that a QB has problems with coaches in multiple places.  I think Goff's days are numbered but we don't have any better options at the moment. 

[Louis Friend]

5 minutes ago, Sllim Pickens said:

If there are relationship issues with Goff and Lynn, I would say that maybe Goff is the issue.  He had a bad relationship with McVay and now Lynn.  Maybe he is just more ego than his talent says he should have and the coaches don't like it.  Seems odd that a QB has problems with coaches in multiple places.  I think Goff's days are numbered but we don't have any better options at the moment. 

I don't know if Goff had issues with McVay. More like Goff was McVay's scapegoat for the team under performing. Then he was shipped to Detroit without any communication. Which even McVay apologized for. With the Rams losing 3 straight and fingers starting to point in L.A. it'll be interesting to see if McVay throws Stafford under the bus as well. 

As for Lynn, we don't know exactly what the issues are. The Lions have stayed mum on the topic. If Campbell didn't take over play calling duties, I don't think we would even know their are internal issues with Lynn. 

[Karnage84]

4 minutes ago, Sllim Pickens said:

If there are relationship issues with Goff and Lynn, I would say that maybe Goff is the issue.  He had a bad relationship with McVay and now Lynn.  Maybe he is just more ego than his talent says he should have and the coaches don't like it.  Seems odd that a QB has problems with coaches in multiple places.  I think Goff's days are numbered but we don't have any better options at the moment. 

Yes - which is why I would not want to throw the baby out with the bath water and fire Lynn. If the contract is going to hold us off from moving on from [Goff] immediately, I'd rather us acquire someone (maybe draft, maybe FA), replace Blough (probably Boyle too) with an eye on finding "the guy" in 2023. We might get lucky and get our Heinecke in the process but ideally draft someone to carry forward. 

[Karnage84]

8 minutes ago, Louis Friend said:

I don't know if Goff had issues with McVay. More like Goff was McVay's scapegoat for the team under performing. Then he was shipped to Detroit without any communication. Which even McVay apologized for. With the Rams losing 3 straight and fingers starting to point in L.A. it'll be interesting to see if McVay throws Stafford under the bus as well. 

As for Lynn, we don't know exactly what the issues are. The Lions have stayed mum on the topic. If Campbell didn't take over play calling duties, I don't think we would even know their are internal issues with Lynn. 

When he making that comment, I don't know if I would have used the word or the phrasing of "it's fine". 

"It's good" = we're going to play golf this weekend, maybe hit up a game

"It's fine" = he missed all of my little league games and I'll never forgive him for it

[LionArkie]

1 hour ago, Karnage84 said:

If Lynn isn't the issue but Goff's contract stops the team from just outright taking a side (and axing either of them) I'd rather hold onto Lynn and work on finding Goff's replacement. Campbell still really needs the experience of a HC in his ear as he's clearly still learning on the job. If Goff isn't the long-term answer, having an experienced OC for a young/developmental QB surely should help. As a couple people have posted, Campbell isn't known for being an X's and O's guy. 

Just for clarity, I'm not speaking of what I want to do, I'm speaking of what I think the Lions will do. If there is an issue between and Lynn and Goff, we already have seen Lynn get his play calling duties stripped away. As you and others have said, DC isn't a play caller so that is somewhat foreboding to me.  Couple that with Goff's contract I don't see any way around it really. I still think Goff is Holmes boy and that plays a part in this as well. Now I'm speculating on all of this, but I think it is a little more complicated then just "Goff sucks". Although it's different, I am somewhat reminded of Joe Lombardi and Stafford. Lombardi was the odd man out then. In comes Cooter and Stafford does much better and he's around the same age as Goff when this goes down. I think there are quite a few variables that leave Goff in Detroit just off potential. Lynne, I can't say the same thing about.