FanHouse DrewHenson

TAMPA, Fla. -- In talking to a cross-section of the National Football League intelligentsia over the last couple of days, one thing is clear: Almost everyone believes the Detroit Lions are planning to select Georgia quarterback Matthew Stafford with the first pick in the NFL draft.

That doesn't necessarily mean it's going to happen – remember when everyone thought the Texans would draft Reggie Bush? – but it does mean that other teams are getting prepared for the draft with the thought that the only way they can get Stafford is by trading up for the Lions' pick, something that few teams seem inclined to do.

Lucky for the media, they're only allowed to watch part of Lions' practice, but from what mlive.com's Tom Kowalski saw, things are worse than usual for the team just three games away from 0-16.

If you somehow missed it, Drew Henson, formerly of the New York Yankees, was under center for the last snap of Sunday's loss to the Vikings because Daunte Culpepper suffered a shoulder injury the series before.

Culpepper has since had an MRI on his shoulder and didn't take part in individual drills this afternoon. Dan Orlovsky, who missed the last five games with a thumb injury on his throwing hand, did take part in practice ... and proceeded to look like crap.

"... his throws were very inconsistent. It appears that Orlovsky is still struggling to get a firm grip on the ball. When he tried to really zip a throw, some were on the mark but others sailed high and others wobbled.

There's more (of course there is): Drew Stanton, the biggest embarrassment in the history of professional football, is the healthiest of the three quarterbacks who didn't previously play baseball for a living, although he's coming off a concussion. And he's embarrassing.

You know, it's still not too late to forfeit the Colts game and prepare extra hard for the Saints. Or, better still, maybe head coach Rod Marinelli can spread around some of that invisibility cream he's been bragging about. That might be the Lions last, best hope at avoiding a big fat oh-fer.

The 0-11 Lions have many believing that a winless season is not only possible, but probable. This is 0for08, FanHouse's eye on the Detroit Lions and their quest for a winless season.

Cheesy network slogans are always fun (like "Season on a Brink"). So are microcosmic - macrocosmic examples in life. For instance, to end the Detroit Lions' 13th loss of the season on Sunday, here's how the final two plays (following a Minnesota field goal which created a four-point lead) unfolded:

Daunte Culpepper drops back, gets ready to unleash a 60-yard hail mary, gets sacked, fumbles, Lions recover, Daunte's arm hangs by a string. Immediately after that, Drew Henson (I wish I was joking) comes in to take a hail mary snap himself with two seconds left, drops back, gets ready to unleash that cannon of an arm he has and ... summarily gets sacked to end the game.

Drew Henson has played at Yankee Stadium and started at quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys, which puts him in the rarest of the rare--the two-sport stars that have made it to the top level of two pro sports.

But at the same time, he's also been a bust at two sports--a top baseball prospect who flamed out at Triple-A thanks to an unhealthy dose of strikeouts, and a washout at quarterback with the Cowboys, where he was beaten out by Tony Romo for the starting job and eventually beaten out for the backup job as well.

Now as he sits as the fourth-string quarterback on the Vikings roster, he's still an interesting story, not for what he's done, but for what could have been, which is why USA Today devoted an entire feature to a player who is unlikely to take one snap from scrimmage during the regular season.

As the story explains, Henson was a one of the top baseball and football prospects coming out of high school in 1998. He tried to do both sports for a while before the Yankees convinced him to give up football for a six-year, $17 million deal.