Quote (BardOfXiix @ Feb 8 2014 08:04pm)
During that season almost every power poll I read in SI or Sporting News had the Lions above the Raiders. At the end of that season, there was talk of the NFL repossessing the Raiders franchise because of how bad it had gotten--no talk of action against the Lions, though. They had a historically bad season and yet they had a lot of things to look up about, namely a strong offensive unit. This season we were without a doubt WORSE than that Lions team, yet we won more games. Win/loss is not as useful a metric as you would think...the Dolphins weren't a very good team down the stretch this year, but they posted the same record as the Steelers, who were a stronger team, and the Ravens, who were a stronger team. The Redskins tanked pretty hard this season, but there's very little question that they were a stronger team than us, especially in the second half of the season. Yet there they are with a worse win-loss than us.
When you're looking at a team that's on the edge between bad and good, you can start talking about a win/loss record. We're a team that's struggling to get first downs most games. We're a team that allowed the opposition to sit their starting QB--twice. Win-loss is not a metric we should be considering for this next season. We should be looking at simply whether or not we see significant improvement in our offensive and defensive production. We're literally that far behind at this point. We don't have a sure-fire starting QB, we don't have any good WRs, our O-line is trash. We have a secondary that covers like a string bikini and a tragic special teams situation. Probably going to loose Janikowski, King has a big leg but no control, and we have no return game. We have 3 spots where I can say we field players that would start on several different teams. DL, LB, RB.
Demanding to approach a .500 win/loss with the players we have is simply ludicrous. A better goal might be to lose no games by 20 or more points, because we got embarrassed by that margin 3 times last season. A better goal might be to score every quarter in half of our games, or to score in more than one quarter every game--we only put up consistent points in 3 of our games (the terrible Jags, the terrible Titans, and the terrible Chargers defense) and got blanked for 3 quarters as many times. We're in a bad spot. Hoping for .500 next season is just unreasonable, especially given our division. Setting impossible goals and then being mad when we don't reach them is part of the reason we're in this mess...the revolving QB/Coaching door for so many seasons has put us further behind than almost any team in the NFL. At this point what I want to see from the team is steady improvement. Even small improvement is better than the "bring in a new coach and burn down the previous roster" approach we've had for so many season. Give us 3 seasons where we make consistent improvements, even TINY ones, and we're a wildcard team. Do I think this coaching staff is great? No. Our playcalling is abysmal. But you'll never win if you never have consistency of thought. You need one man with one plan for several seasons to achieve anything, and frankly with how bad our team was two seasons ago, three seasons is just not enough time to make a serious turnaround.
It's this "win now or fire" mentality that has kept us in the shitter for 11 seasons. It's the same reason a lot of other teams have bad stretches. Even if our current situation isn't the best approach, if we just have some consistency we can get our team to a spot where a coaching change will actually do us good. If we can build a team that can reach 8-8 over the next 3 seasons, then we can start looking at bringing in someone new so they'll at least have SOMETHING to work with. Because right now, pickings are slim, and having unrealistic expectations won't help us get where we all agree we want to be--winning and in the playoffs.
i just looked up 4 dif power rankings from the 2008 season and all 4 had the lions 4-5 spots behind the raiders. i agree with almost everything you said but i just cant get on board with them being better than the raiders that year. im not trying to argue about it either. everything else though i agree. im just hoping for a good draft and some nice FA signings along with some of our FA's that need to be signed up also. And yes i dont think measuring a team like this strictly on a W/L record is fair, especially with the schedule we have coming up it will be hard to get another 4-5 wins. BUT if we improve in major categories and have better stats in certain things than yes i wouldnt mind keeping all the same coaches and GM for the 4th year, if next year is good except the W/L than maybe the year after we can push for a wild card. ive always been saying to keep them around despite the 4 win seasons so i havent been one of the ppl raging about firing them becuase we cant get wins or make the playoffs and we for damn sure aint getting in this year either so everyone who expects a good year can kiss that away real fast. we just cant back track on anything otherwise they have to leave. what if they only win 2 games but all the major stats are a lot better like point margin of loss per game, points scored, passing and rushing td's, defensive points allowed, turnovers ect. are all better except for the wins, then do we still keep them? i know our team right now doesnt have much talent but lets be real 2 wins is fucking pathetic lol.