FanHouse Martin Mayhew

Following a historic 0-16 season, the Detroit Lions have undergone a franchise makeover -- both on and off the field. Martin Mayhew has taken over for the maligned Matt Millen and Jim Schwartz is now the head coach. They have made myriad changes via trade, free agency and the draft.

Thus, they look toward training camp with a new motto. Detroit is "The Land of Opportunity." The meaning to the phrase is that Schwartz and Mayhew have instilled a new philosophy, which they are calling "no starters, no depth chart." The theory is that nothing is set in stone and anyone can win a job in training camp (though I'm guessing Calvin Johnson is quite safe as the starting WR1).

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.

It's kind of old to talk about it, because it happens pretty much every year: The team picking first in the draft has so many holes, it needs to at least look at trading down.

The Detroit Lions are in an interesting position, though. It's not terribly surprising that they are short of good players, being that they went 0-16 in 2008. What's different, though, is that the Lions have two first-round picks. From the sounds of it, they're willing to shop both of them.

Maybe he will go on to NFL greatness, but for now, Dan Orlovsky is best known as "that dude who ran out of the end zone for no apparent reason." The Lions' 2005 fifth-round pick, Orlovsky started started seven games at quarterback last season, but has decided to test the free-agent market instead of returning to Detroit.

It has less to do with the Lions' 0-16 putridity and more to do with the organization telling Orlovsky, in so many words, that there was a better chance he'd lead the league in rushing yards than win the starting quarterback job.

Lending credence to the widely held belief that Georgia quarterback Matthew Stafford will be the first pick in the 2009 NFL draft, the general manager of the Detroit Lions has acknowledged that the time is right for the team to find its quarterback of the future.

General manager Martin Mayhew hedged a bit in his comments at the Indianapolis scouting combine, but the bottom line is that Detroit needs a quarterback and isn't confident in any of the passers already under contract to the team.

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.

Jim Schwartz, probably more than any other current NFL coach, uses advanced statistics to measure player performance. The former Georgetown economics major graduated third in his class, and he's a fan of Football Outsiders, basically the only site doing for football what Bill James did for baseball some 30 years ago.

Winning games comes down to more than running a few regressions and calling it a day; there's also the on-the-field stuff: blocking, throwing, tackling and, ultimately, coaching. Finding that balance is the key. And two days into the toughest gig in sports, Schwartz sounds like a man who knows what he's doing. Or at the very least, he's a fabulous salesman.

Detroit Lions owner William Clay Ford is incompetent. As the grandson of Henry Ford, he always has been and always will be a very rich man, but he's never accomplished anything in his life on his own merits, and in his 45 years owning the Lions, he has proven time and again that he hasn't a clue how to run a football team.

I thought everyone who followed football knew this, but apparently not. Peter King writes at SI.com that the football world is shocked -- shocked! -- by the latest example of Ford's incompetence:

I think no one in the league -- and I mean no one -- can believe William Clay Ford didn't move to hire a new GM (even though there is great respect for Martin Mayhew) and the front-office staff.

King is well connected in the NFL, and I guess all of his league sources are telling him they're surprised that Ford didn't overhaul his front office. But really, why would anyone expect Ford to do such a thing? What has Ford ever done that would make anyone expect him to suddenly make big changes to his franchise, after 45 years of being the worst owner in the NFL?

The bottom line is that as long as this man owns this team, this team is going to stink. That shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.

I don't know enough about Tom Lewand or Martin Mayhew to comment on whether Lions owner William Clay Ford was wise to promote from within the organization, but history suggests that no one would've complained if Ford blew up the whole operation and started over.

The franchise has just 40 wins this decade, which is slightly more impressive when you consider that the total includes the recently completed 0-for-'08 run. (Not really; it works out to 5 wins a season versus 4.4 wins a season. In the salary-cap era, that blows.) Perhaps predictably, Clay decided to, as they say, stay the course and give current team employees Lewand and Mayhew shiny new titles.

Not surprisingly, the 2009 Lions look very similar to the versions that preceded it. Which is to say: unimpressive and out of sorts. Via PFT, the first post-Rod Marinelli press conference provided plenty of unintentional hilarity. Because after all, laughter -- even if accidental -- is the best medicine. Or something.

When Mlive.com's Tom Kowalski writes that the Martin Mayhew -- the chap burdened with the impossible task of being less competent than Matt Millen -- is taking draft preparations seriously some five months before Roger Goodell starts reading names off a sheet of paper, pretty much tells you all you need to know about why the Lions are annually the worst team in football.

Millen had no business running a team (in case that wasn't obvious, the careers of Charles Rogers and Mike Williams confirm as much) and even though Mayhew is only the interim general manager, he has a chance to show he's capable of handling the full-time gig. (And when I say "handling" I mean in the conventional sense; not in the "Matt Millen shows up for work to catch up on his sleep" sense.)