FanHouse JimSchwartz

Every week, NFL FanHouse hits the lowlights from Sunday's action, looking at those players who did the most to move their head coaches that much closer to returning to the Bed and Breakfast business.

This has nothing to do with the 26-0 shutout the Packers laid on the Lions last Sunday.

Typically, this space is reserved for a player or players whose performance on a given week made his coach's week miserable or job status shaky. But we're going a little bit bigger picture this week.

In this instance, it was the Lions' brass playing the role of coach killer on a coach manning sidelines over 500 miles south.

NFL Coaches Fight Club: the Tournament. Because we have nothing better to do than predict what might happen if head coaches started punching each other in the face.

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NFL Coaches Fight Club: the Tournament. Because we have nothing better to do than predict what might happen if head coaches started punching each other in the face.

Consider this hypothetical: what if two coaches met in a dark alley and threw down in a no-holds-barred brawl? Who would emerge victorious?

First, some background: back when I was in high school, when my friends and I were pretty creative in finding ways to avoid actually paying attention in class, we'd create brackets (think NCAA Tournament) where we'd pit our teachers against each other**. Whoever we thought would win in a fight advanced to the next round. It always ended with our offensive line coach against our wrestling coach in the finals and a huge argument as to who would come out on top.

Anyway, last week, the Back Porch staff somehow ended up discussing whether Rex Ryan or Tom Cable would win in a old school playground scrap. I passed along the above information, and shortly after that, an idea was born -- NFL Coaches Fight Club: the Tournament.

When you go a whole season without winning a game, it's hard to fault people who don't want to watch you play anymore. So rather than grumble about losing season ticketholders, the Detroit Lions are doing something about it. The team sent e-mails to about 6,000 former season ticketholders a few weeks ago, inviting them to attend Wednesday's minicamp session. A few of them took the team up on it and attended workouts.

"I think it's important for them just to reconnect with the team," new coach Jim Schwartz said. "There have been a lot of changes since they had season tickets. I want them to see the direction that we're taking. I think if you watch practice, you can see sort of the philosophies that we're going to have and you see a lot of different faces and you need to get reacquainted with your team. There's so much turnover."

The Lions had all the swagger of a tranquilized sloth in 2008. It's hard to blame them, really, given their 0-16 season -- at some point, even the most cocksure player on that roster (no, not Dan Orlovsky) had to feel pretty defeated. So as with all new coaches who inherit beaten-down teams, Detroit's rookie head man Jim Schwartz has set about trying to change the attitude in Motown.

Schwartz wants more hard-nosed players, and guys with a little bit of attitude. Something tells me he's going to enjoy linebacker Zack Follett, a seventh-round draft pick of Detroit's last weekend.

Detroit tried to pretend that it could live without Matthew Stafford. The Lions let rumors swirl about them trading out of the No. 1 pick, taking an offensive tackle, even being satisfied with Aaron Curry.

Their deal with Stafford, announced late Friday night, makes all that seem ridiculous now. A 6-year contract potentially worth more than $70 million is not a deal struck out of reluctance or uncertainty. For better or worse, the Lions have made it known that Stafford is the guy they believe can turn around their franchise.

There is no turning back now -- the next six years of Detroit Lions football will be judged on what Stafford does.

For most of the offseason, people who pontificate about such things had the Lions taking an offensive player with the first-overall pick. Quarterback Matthew Stafford was the popular choice, with offensive tackles Jason Smith and Eugene Monroe also in the mix. But maybe the organization should focus on fixing the defense, which, surprisingly, was the weakest unit on an 0-16 outfit last season.

Linebacker Aaron Curry has been described as the "safest pick of the draft," and has even been mentioned as a potential pre-draft Lions target. And today, after watching the team's final mincamp practice, MLive.com's Tom Kowalski has a suggestion: Detroit should use its first three draft picks to shore up the defense.

I give Daunte Culpepper credit. Last fall, he went from his couch to Lions starting quarterback with predictably disastrous results. He weighed close to three bills at the time, and looked nothing like the Pro Bowl quarterback drafted by the Vikings in 1999. A career-threatening knee injury will do that.

Now, nearly four months after the Lions put the finishing touches on an 0-16 season, Culpepper has dropped 30 pounds, regained his confidence, and looks like a completely different player -- both physically and mentally. During the team's first minicamp practice of the offseason, the Detroit Free Press' Nicholas Cotsonika had only laudatory things to say about Culpepper:

When the season ended, nobody could've imagined that the Denver Broncos would trade their 25-year-old Pro Bowl quarterback. Yet a month after Jay Cutler learned that the organization had contemplated making a deal for Matt Cassel, that possibility might finally be realized.

Broncos owner Pat Bowlen, who admitted to to being "very disappointed" in the way Cutler has handled the situation from the outset, issued this statement Tuesday: