Watch out for the Lions in 2009

What would you say if I told you the Detroit Lions have a 21% chance of making the playoffs this year?

Considering that only 37.5% of all teams in the NFL make the playoffs in any given season, you'd probably think odds a little over half as good as that would be too high. To be sure, strange things can happen: Jay Cutler could bomb in Chicago, Green Bay might not fix its defense with the 3-4, Adrian Peterson could get hurt (gulp!), and Matthew Stafford could be the best rookie quarterback in league history. And BAM! The Lions take the NFC North, or at least get enough in-division victories to secure a Wild Card berth.

Some people get their ideas through meditation, others get them in the shower...this unlikely scenario came to me, as many great ideas likely do, by watching Alge Crumpler in last night's Hall of Fame Game between the Titans and the Bills.

Say what?

Apart from noticing Crumpler's girth (was he always that big?), my first thoughts upon seeing him was why the Falcons let him go to the Titans in the first place. He was a reliable receiver for the team for seven years, averaging 45 catches and just over 600 yards per season, numbers most tight ends would be more than happy with. The natural reason, of course, was that the Falcons were rebuilding after a 4-12 year and thought they could afford to let their high-priced veteran player go.

So what happened? Matt Ryan is what happened. The Falcons went 11-5, made the playoffs, and, in the offseason, traded for future Hall of Famer Tony Gonzalez to play tight end for them in 2009. Now, Gonzalez is a better receiver than Crumpler, to be sure. But why didn't the Falcons just hang on to Crumpler and accept that it might just take a couple years to be competitive? And what if Matt Cassel leads the Chiefs to a good record and playoff berth this year? Will the Chiefs regret giving up Gonzalez (not to mention Jared Allen last year)?

The trade deadline in baseball recently passed, and you see similar things in MLB: high-priced veterans being traded to contending teams in exchange for cheaper prospects. In MLB, with no salary cap, legions of minor leaguers, and a powerful players' union able to negotiate huge guaranteed contracts for its constituents, it probably makes more sense, even if your team thinks it can contend in a couple years. That kid from AAA might not be as good as your All-Star, but he's reasonably decent and makes about 1/50th the money. And if the situation is reversed in a year or two, you can make a deadline deal of your own and trade him for a pricy veteran.

The point is, why do NFL teams let their top talent go when they have a bad year or two (or 10, in the case of the Lions)? With a draft that actually works (more or less) in distributing top talent to the worst teams in the league, more moderate contracts, a salary cap, and a shorter schedule, which leads to greater fluctuations in win-loss record than true talent level would normally account for, why not hang on to your good players? You're not going to save that much money and might pull out of your nose dive quicker than you think.

But how quickly do teams "turn it around" in the NFL and go from awful to playoff hopeful? To answer this, I counted an "awful team" as one that went 4-12 or worse since the 1988 season (with 1987 being the strike year). I then counted how many years it took that team to make the playoffs after its awful season. If a team hasn't yet made the playoffs since its awful season, I didn't count them in the survey. And some teams' playoff-counting team counted against multiple awful teams. For instance, the 1997 and 1998 Bears are counted as taking four and three years, respectively, to make the playoffs, owing to the 2001 Bears' playoff run.

57 teams over 21 seasons meet these criteria. Their average wait to make the playoffs was 3.19 years, distributed below:

1 Year	12 teams
2 Years	16 teams
3 Years	7 teams
4 Years	8 teams
5 Years	6 teams
6 Years	3 teams
7 Years	3 teams
8 Years	2 teams

Of the 57 teams to go 4-12 or worse over this span, nearly half (28) made the playoffs within two years. Suddenly, blowing up the whole team doesn't seem like such a good idea.

Of course, it could be that blowing up the whole team was why those teams made the playoffs. Maybe the players Kansas City received in the trade for Jared Allen will be the reason they make the playoffs in 2009. (The Tony Gonzalez trade won't bear fruit for a while, though; the Chiefs dealt Gonzo for just a 2nd-round pick in 2010.)

And then there's the Lions. 12 of 57 teams -- about 21% -- made the playoffs the year after their "awful" year. And the awful year wasn't just a blip on the radar during an otherwise good run. Interestingly, as I look at those 12 teams, none of them seemed to be "good" for any significant length of time before their awful season, and a few -- like the 03-04 Chargers, 98-99 Rams, 98-99 Colts, and 95-96 Jaguars -- were very good for several years after making the playoffs for the first time following a lengthy period of mediocrity (or nonexistence, in the case of the Jags). The Falcons were the most recent team to accomplish this feat, so maybe Matt Ryan can lead them to a new era of dominance in the NFC. And maybe Matthew Stafford can usher in a new era of prosperity for the Lions, if not in 2009, then at least by 2010.

Or maybe he'll just be Joey Harringon, Part II.

Not so bad after all

Given the deal the Falcons just gave Roddy White (6 years, $50 million, $18.6 million guaranteed) and the Cardinals gave Larry Fitzgerald (4 years, $40 million) last offseason, suddenly the 6-year, $42 million ($16 million guaranteed) for Bernard Berrian doesn't seem so bad. Certainly, Berrian's not in Fitzgerald's (who seems dramatically underpaid) league, but he might be on par with White, assuming the Vikings get better quarterback play.

Of course, long contracts for wide receivers -- and, admittedly, any player -- can be dicey. Two years ago, this article quoted Steve Smith's new deal as putting him "among the five highest-paid receivers in the league, along with Marvin Harrison, Terrell Owens, Javon Walker and Deion Branch."

Smith, Harrison, Owens: Worth big money.

Walker, Branch: Not so much.

Hey, at least Fred Smoot's off the Vikings' books!

More one-liners

My week's still looking pretty lousy, and watching the Vikings "play" this week didn't make things any better.

Seven fumbles? Really?

Adrian Peterson's practice schedule for the next week:

Monday
8 a.m. to 1 p.m.: Work on not fumbling
1 p.m. to 2 p.m.: Lunch
2 p.m. to 6 p.m.: Work on not fumbling

Tuesday through Saturday
Same as Monday

"Man, I love it when _________ has the ball in his hands, he can really make things happen, but, boy, am I afraid of a turnover when ________'s got it!"

In week one, you would have filled in those blanks with "Adrian Peterson" and "Tarvaris Jackson." In week 16, you still would, but...

Speaking of which, did anyone else pick Visanthe Shiancoe as the team's late-season MVP?

Uh...that was PI against Sidney Rice at the end. Really, it was, to anyone possessing eyes.

I won the office picks league last week. This week, I have three games right so far out of 14 (New England, Miami, and Oakland).

Go Packers!

Favre wants out, but where will he be in?

I'm not sick of Brett Favre news, per se. What I'm sick of is Brett Favre innuendo, rumors, half-truths, "conversations with a source close to Favre," and news of what he does with his cell phone. (OMG WTF TXT MESSAGE LOL!)

But now there's some real, substantial news about #4, and it's seeming almost guaranteed that he'll come back to play in 2008. It's not all that surprising, really. Brett Favre loves Sundays. He'd kill for the joy of going out there every week in front of 70,000 screaming fans. For three hours a week, he's on top of the world, a nigh-invincible gladiator on the gridiron.

Unfortunately, there are 168 other hours in the week, and while I won't go so far as to say Favre's miserable those other 165 hours, they don't come close to the three hours on Sunday. He's like a junkie, getting his quick fix once a week and then having to endure the pale imitation of practice the rest of the week. And then there's the interminable off-season. If you think it's hard for us, the fans, to endure, at least we don't have to sweat it out in mini-camps, two-a-days, and OTAs all spring and summer long, just to get to that brief euphoria of Sunday afternoons.

Toss in the fact that Favre's 38 years old and his general propensity for "winging it" and you can see why he'd want to skip a good portion of that "unnecessary" prep time and just get to the good stuff. If all you had were those three hours every Sunday, Favre would play until he was 68. You think Allen Iverson hates practice? I promise you, Brett Favre hates it more.

So, now that he's coming back, and apparently not to the Packers, where will he go? What team needs a 38-year-old quarterback with a spotty recent track record who'll command a decent salary and won't accept a backup job? On the plus side, he'd be a major attraction and I hear he's fairly durable.

First things first: I think there's absolutely zero chance he goes to an NFC North team. If the Packers can't arrange that as a condition of his release, I still think it's a slim chance. Minnesota, for better or for worse, seems committed to Tarvaris Jackson, and I think adding Favre at this relatively late stage of things would seriously confuse a team that seems poised for a deep playoff run. Chicago has two QBs they're not sure about -- why add a third? And Detroit's got a junior version of Favre in Jon Kitna. Looking around the rest of the league, here are my thoughts on where he could go:

Atlanta. Would be poetic, wouldn't it? Favre goes back to the team that originally drafted him. He'd have to be a better mentor for Matt Ryan than Chris Redman and Joey Harrington. And remember how many butts Michael Vick put in the seats? Favre could immediately return the Falcons to watchability, if not relevance.

Baltimore. Almost the same situation as Atlanta. Young, highly drafted QB (Joe Flacco), questionable incumbent (Kyle Boller), no real expectations. Would there be room in the locker room, though, for both Favre's ego and that of Ray Lewis?

Buffalo. Here's a team that's got two young but only moderately talented quarterbacks (Trent Edwards and JP Losman), a top-flight wide receiver (Lee Evans), a good young running back (Marshawn Lynch), and, after a 7-9 season in 2007, some aspirations for a playoff spot. And I think he could handle the weather.

Houston. Yes, they still owe Matt Schaub too much money. But you have to think Favre would love to be reunited with Ahman Green and take a team that's never been to the playoffs into the promised land.

San Francisco. Just how committed are the 49ers to Alex Smith, Shaun Hill, and J.T. O'Sullivan? If the answer is "not very," then what happens when Brett Favre and Mike Martz join forces? (The answer is that Frank Gore gets about five carries a game.)

Tampa Bay. No real reason here except that Jon Gruden is still the head coach and Brett Favre is a quarterback. Do you need anything else?