Pride Of Detroit

Kitna?

Tony K — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:36:48 -0000

Now, Jon is a great guy, and I would never think anything else, but isn't it time we get a guy that we can keep, and do an adequate job and be our franchise QB? Roy Williams wants to leave, we could have traded Shaun Rogers, and the Fords have spent money in the past, so why can't we get Carson Palmer if he wants to leave Cinncinatti? I'm just so fed up...

Starting Right DT?

L.A. Lion — Thu, 29 May 2008 21:42:10 -0000

Who do you think will get the starting right defensive tackle spot come the beginning of the regular season? Chuck Darby doesn't really excite me all that much and seems to be well past his prime. I think Langston Moore made some big plays last season, especially when the Lions were winning games. I suppose Andre Fluellen has a shot too, but as a rookie he's at a serious disadvantage of earning the starting spot. Your thoughts?

Your kid could be a future Detroit Lion!

Hutch9 — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:33:38 -0000

Former Lion’s offensive lineman, Lomas Brown will be holding football performance enhancement camps for kids 7-18 years old. The camps will be held in the Grand Rapids, Lansing, Detroit and Adrian areas throughout the months of June and July. Former Lions players including Barry Sanders, Herman Moore, Robert Porcher, Chris Spielman, Luther Ellis, and many more will be attending the camps to coach the children.

The football camps are designed to help improve the kids’ skills, technique, knowledge of the game, as well as show them how to become a team player. The cost of the camp will be $149 and will include a camp T-shirt, a participation award, as well as a lunch and snack each day. There will also be a golf outing at Quail Ridge Golf Course in Grand Rapids on July 27, 2008. The cost of the golf outing will be $600 for a group of 4. All of the proceeds from the camp and the golf outing will be going to the research efforts for brachial plexus palsy at the University of Michigan.

“ I am excited to be teaching today’s youth the game that I have loved for all these years, while at the same time raising awareness for brachial plexus palsy and the continuous research efforts,” said Lomas Brown about his camp.

You can register online at www.lomasbrown75.com. There will also be a list of all the dates, times and locations of the camps. For more information please feel free to contact Chad Hutchinson at chad@lomasbrown75.com. You can also call 866.298.3828 - Ext. 11 if you have any questions.

Back-up Center?

ferg1975 — Mon, 05 May 2008 23:29:24 -0000

I was looking at the Lions' depth chart today I noticed that only one player is listed as a center, Raiola. Was wondering if anybody knows who the team plans on using as a back-up? I don't think any of the guards listed have any experience at center, so now what? Free Agency? I personally think Raiola is an average center at best, I have seen him get blown up by tackles over and over. Maybe the change to zone blocking will benefit him. At any rate, because I have to make this 75 words long, I was just wondering who else can play center that is on the roster currently?

Cliff Avril

ferg1975 — Sat, 03 May 2008 03:28:08 -0000

As we all know rookie mini camp started today and there was a Q&A posted on detroitlions.com. Looks like Marinelli drafted some defensive lineman that he likes. I did not like losing Sean Rogers even though he was lazy, but perhaps the coach does know what he is doing. I am interested in seeing how quick Cliff Avril is, the coach says he has got some juice. It would be nice to see a LIon register double digit sacks in a season again.

RECEIVER??????

ferg1975 — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 17:48:15 -0000

Can somebody explain to me why the team needs a receiver? Here I think Millen is doing somewhat decent, although he might be giving up more than he needs to. Is this guy a great return guy or something? Unfortunately I don't follow college football enough but I do know what the Lions roster needs are and receiver is on the bottom of the list. Offensive lineman depth is questionable, was there no lineman out there? Somebody help me out here!

Kevin Smith

GAKnight — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:22:56 -0000

Hello, Lions fans from a Georgia based UCF fan. Believe me when I say, you got the better back when you picked Kevin Smith over Tashard Choice. I am a Tech grad and follow both teams (20 year UCF season ticket holder) and there is NO comparison. It is not a stretch to say you got the steal of the draft. This kid is one great guy who ran for just under 2,600 yards and 30 TD's counting the one receiving. He can catch, block and has great feet. He is not exactly Barry Sanders but you will be reminded of those days. He is powerful, faster than the so-called experts think and has great durability. He had but one injury in college that kept him out of four games his sophmore season. He hold the NCAA record for carries and his teammates adore him. Congrats to the Powder Blue!

Welcome to the new Pride Of Detroit and SB Nation

clockwerks — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 07:55:57 -0000

Hey Pride Of Detroit,

Today is the big day. We've switched your community over to the new SB Nation sports blog platform. My name is Trei, and I'm here to help you get adjusted to the new home we've built for you. If you have questions or trouble with the new system, post a comment in this thread and myself or one of the team (lovitt, sixfoot6 or odacrem) will try to point you in the right direction.

Before we begin, I want to let you know we still consider this a beta platform, so don't be surprised if you find a few bugs or if everything isn't exactly right yet. We hope you'll take the time to report any problems you encounter at bugreport@sbnation.com. We'll be continuing to make changes and improving things.

Please take a few minutes to read about what's new below. But if you just can't wait to jump in, here are some quick things to check out:

Sign up for your SB Nation network account and claim your old blog accounts
Once you're logged in, press your Z key in any thread with new comments
Explore your dashboard and setup your profile
Read the guide to the new FanPost editor
Install the FanShot bookmarklet and post videos to Pride Of Detroit from YouTube or images from Flickr
Click the "Rec" button on posts and comments to help other people find the good stuff.
Customize display options on your Edit Settings page

What Has Changed

SB Nation Network Accounts - the Big Change

Readers across all of our blogs told us they wanted one account to use on every SB Nation blog. To make this work, we're requiring that everyone create a new SB Nation network account. In most cases you should be able to keep your old username, but a few of you may have to choose something new, since every other community in SB Nation will be going through this same transition. We tried to be as fair as possible in deciding who gets to keep which name, using a formula that takes into account length of membership and frequency of activity.

We want to make it as easy as possible for you to participate on all of our blogs, but we don't want to encourage everyone to start visiting rival team blogs and initiating flame wars. To maintain friendly communities we ask that you explicitly join each blog in order to participate. It's a two-click process, but it does means accepting each blog's community guidelines. Just as you join each blog individually, you can be banned on each blog individually.

You can claim old accounts from multiple SB Nation blogs, and your new username will be retroactively attached to all your old comments and diaries. So now you'll be able to access all your writings from your single profile page... like magic.

To get started, click here to claim your old blog accounts and create a new SB Nation network account.

FanPosts (the Section Formerly Known as Diaries)

We changed their name. Why? Because we took this major upgrade as an opportunity to leave behind some vocabulary that never made much sense for a sports blog. SB Nation is the network of, by and for fans, and these are the blog posts we make. So we call them FanPosts. When you're at a bar telling someone to check out your online sports opinions, you don't have to suggest they read your diary.

FanPosts are displayed differently on the homepage - we include your avatar to give more credit for the time you spend writing great posts. The new post editor has a WYSIWYG view that provides easy formatting. It also auto-saves drafts so you don't have to worry about losing your work when you compose a post within the web browser. And you can now associate teams, players and games with your posts: these tools promote your FanPosts on our new team, player and game pages - across the entire network.

The new system does not work like the old diary editor. For example, in HTML mode the new editor doesn't auto-create a new paragraph from two line breaks. But it does offer a whole array of new features. Look for the blinking help button on the right side of the FanPost editor for quick tips, and take a look at our full guide to writing FanPosts on the new platform.

IMPORTANT - if you write your posts in Microsoft Word or some other off-line editor, you will get the most reliable behavior if you cut & paste your post into the HTML view of the FanPost editor. And if you do that, remember to wrap <p></p> tags around each paragraph so your text doesn't run together.

Visual Redesign

This one is probably the most obvious change of all. Like other major websites working to improve readability for their audience, we've adopted a fixed-width layout optimized for the 1024 x 768 resolution used by the majority of Pride Of Detroit and SB Nation network users. Use the switcher below the user menu if you prefer the wider layout designed for 1280 monitors. We've introduced a top navigation bar with quick links into old and new sections of the site. We also polished a few edges, made some things larger, others smaller and moved a few boxes here and there. More changes and adjustments to come.

Search

We've completely replaced the old search engine with a new one. We're excited to make it easier to find old posts and comments, but we've only taken our first pass on the tools we're offering. We're focused on making search even better than what you had before, so please know that we're aware search is missing key features and we're working on it.

What's New

Schedule, Scores, Stats and Roster

Pride Of Detroit now has all the basic information about the Detroit Lions and hundreds of other teams. During games you'll see a regularly updated line score, and as the season progresses we'll track team stat totals and leaders. This is just our first step, so look for us to publish more detailed and archival stats in the future. The best part about all this sports data is that we've integrated it directly into the blog so. We now have special pages that aggregate all blog posts written about games, players and teams.

Recommending FanPosts

Some writing deserves more attention and more conversation. If you want to bump a FanPost up to the top and keep it there for awhile, just click the 'Rec' link under the body of the post. When a FanPost receives enough recommendations it will make the recommended list.

Auto-refreshing Comments

You no longer need to refresh the page to see new comments. If you're logged in, new comments will automatically appear on the page every few seconds. When you post a comment, the page will not refresh either. If you want to quickly cycle through all the new comments, you can press the C key on your keyboard. Unmark a new comment after you've read it with the X key. And use the Z key if you want to umark comments as you're cycling through them.

As you use these shortcuts to cycle through comments, press the R key to reply to the current comment. All these helpful keyboard shortcuts are listed at the top of each comments section for reference.

Recommending Comments

Now you can reward those folks who take the time to look up stats and make smart arguments in the comments. Next to each comment there is an 'actions' link that you can click to find the recommend and flag options.

Flagging Comments

To help the moderators on a site, we've built-in tools that let you flag comments that are spam, trolling or just plain inappropriate. Only moderators can see those flags.

FanShots

Many members of the community just want to post that one link, video, photo or quote, but don't need a full FanPost. We've got you covered: FanShots let you share YouTube videos, Flickr or PhotoBucket photos, quotes from articles, portions of chat transcripts, top 5 lists and simple links. If it's a video or image we'll put a thumbnail on the homepage when you post it.

For those of you who are experienced internet hunter-gatherers of Detroit Lions material, install the bookmarklet onto the links bar of your browser and share FanShots with the community from wherever on the web you find that killer quote or photo.

Avatars

Upload an image so folks can see your custom avatar on your profile, your FanPosts, and all your comments.

Network Profiles

Now that we have unified SB Nation network accounts, your profile will be your central hub for all of your activity on any blogs where you are a member.

Network bar

The top bar stays with you on all SB Nation blogs. It's a quick way to login and logout. When you're logged in, you'll see your avatar and screen name which links to your profile. The icon to the right leads to your Dashboard area where you can edit your settings, profile, account details and any FanPosts or FanShots you've published. As we add more blogs to the new SB Nation network, the My Blogs menu will be a handy way to navigate between the blogs you've joined.

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There are plenty more small changes and additions we've made, so please take a careful look around and explore this new system. We appreciate your patience and hope you'll help us improve the new platform for this and all the other SB Nation blogs.

And in case you missed it, you'll want to start by claiming your old blog accounts and creating a new SB Nation network account.

Reminder

Sean Yuille — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:55:14 -0000

Pride of Detroit 2.0 is coming tomorrow. I expect the switch to be made sometime overnight, so when you wake up POD will have a new look. I'll be around all day to answer any questions that may arise as at first this will take time to get used to.

Best, Worst gqames of '08

Jettero2112 — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:52:56 -0000

Here's an article from Jason Cole at Yahoo Sports picking the best and worst games of the '08 season. Guess what. Lions are listed as 3 of the worst games. Here they are:

Week 1 against Atlanta
Week 12 against Tampa
Week 15 against Indy.

He doesn't have much good to say about Detroit and, from the recent trends with that idiot Millen in charge, I can see why. Very sad.

Draft HQ Update

Sean Yuille — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 06:14:54 -0000

Just wanted to let everyone know that Draft HQ (located on the left sidebar) is coming together. I should have a draft tracker for all 7 rounds finished by tonight and will have a few other things up as well in the coming days. Since the draft is now under three weeks away, it is time to start focusing solely on that, and that is exactly what I plan to do barring any other breaking news.

Who is getting the Axe or traded?

ferg1975 — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 07:45:56 -0000

Spring roster cleaning should be coming soon in order to clear cap room. Roy Williams is supposively safe since trading him apparently will not help. I was wondering who could be cut or traded to help? I have a hard time believing that the team is in this situation. Oh I almost forgot; we have Millen the Clown running the circus! The only two players I see on the roster (other than those that probably won't make the roster anyway) that may be cut or traded are Mike Furrey and Dan Campbell, anybody have any other ideas? Mike Furrey may even get some trade offers, he has shown that he can be a dependable possession receiver.

Marinelli must Buc this trend

Jettero2112 — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 02:56:43 -0000

Here's a nice article from Rob Parker of The Detroit News.

The Lions are falling into a pattern of reaching into Marinelli's past and getting former Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Here is the link to the article.

I have to say I agree with his thinking and don't like the way this off-season has been shaping up in the free agent market. There was a bit of decent talent out there and Millen signs guys on the downside of their careers, all ex-Bucs and almost all with recent injury histories. Why the hell is he still in charge?

Florence Signs with Jacksonville

Sean Yuille — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 19:58:50 -0000

Just a quick note...

Cornerback Drayton Florence, a player the Lions supposedly had interest in, has signed with the Jaguars.

J P Losman

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:25:14 -0000

I was just at Detroit Airport and saw JP Losman hop into a Limo. Has anyone heard anything about Losman being traded to Lions. He has a cannon of na arm and can run like the wind. At first I thought it was Adam Sandler, but the Limo driver was holding a sign that said "Losman".

Go Lions!!!!!

Super Bowl 2009

Rogers To Denver??

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 01:28:47 -0000

At least that is what the Rocky Mountain News is reporting --

You can see the details Here --

http://www.milehighreport.com/story/2008/2/25/184155/825

I know that my feelings are mixed on this, as are many of my readers over at the MHR.....

Obviously when Rogers is motivated he can be a monster. We saw that first hand in the drubbing the Lions handed the Broncos. Can he do that for 4 quarters a game over 16 games???

Mike Leach

harendaman365 — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 03:13:00 -0000

I just joined this website, so here goes...

I think the lions should hire Texas Tech coach Mike Leach as at least their offensive coordinator. With an extraordinarily innovative offense he has made an offenseive powerhouse out of Texas Tech, setting passing records with no names such as the illustrious Kliff Kingsbury and BJ Symons. Point is, dude's a genius.
"But Calvinist365, what about Bobby Petrino, Steve Spurrier, Nick Saban and other college coaches who went to the NFL and flopped badly? How do you know Mike Leach wont do the same?"
Simple answer. Texas Tech is not a big school. They dont get all star recruits like bigger colleges. The coaches who win, do so because the play with great players. Its not hard to put together a winning team for say, Notre Dame if every single Catholic kid in Indiana who can throw a football wants to be a fighting Irish. However Leach has assembled a prolific offense with the guys every other team rejected.
In conclusion, do we know whether Mike Leach will be a good coach? No. Is he worth the chance? I think so. Look at Michael Crabtree's stats. Then imagine Mike Leach with Calvin Johnson.

For more info, see this article written by Michael Lewis, same guy who wrote "The Blind Side" and "Moneyball"
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/magazine/04coach.html?pagewanted=all

Lions Team Report

Jettero2112 — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 02:57:59 -0000

When the Lions introduced Jim Colletto as their new offensive coordinator, it quickly became clear that they were distancing themselves from Mike Martz and his methods.

Colletto said things like "You don't have to be a genius to figure these things out" and "It's not rocket science." Asked about his philosophy, he talked about a "balanced attack."

The story also comments on Shaun Rogers, hoping Kevin Jones is ready for training camp, resigning TJ Duckett and talks about the team, position by position. Good read.

The story can be read here

New Lions offensive coordinator preaches balanced attack

Jettero2112 — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 19:37:22 -0000

Lions coach Rod Marinelli introduced two newly promoted assistants -- offensive coordinator Jim Colletto and assistant head coach/passing game coordinator Kippy Brown -- and the trio made it clear that Martz's complicated offensive scheme was a thing of the past.

"The philosophy of the team is going to be a balanced attack," Colletto said. "I want an offense that can run the ball and throw the ball."

The story is HERE.

Is Millen in hiding?

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 20:24:06 -0000

I think Matt Millen and Bill Ford ought to be required to stand on the sidelines during and after games. It would give the fans a focus point for their anger, disappointment, frustration, etc., etc. They are destroying the franchise, but prefer to do it in hiding.

I also would like to see, just once, one of our coaches pull somebody out of a game and send him or them to the locker room when they start playing like many of the guys did in the Green Bay game. What a disappointment for those who play their hearts out.