The past few days have been completely magical for this city’s sports teams. Red Wings fans saw Johan Franzen equal the goal output of the entire Avalanche team over a four-game series. Pistons fans saw a team destined to trail 3-1 in Philadelphia turn on the jets and never look back. Of course, there was that team with a month’s regular season play under its belt that went to Yankee Stadium and brought their own set of brooms with them. What preceded all of these tremendous events also happened to come out of New York City this past weekend. For Lions fans the NFL Draft has become a yearbook to remind all about what mistakes have been made over team history. 2008 is arguably set to add a new page to the mistake yearbook. If you don’t agree with me, look at what the largest story was coming out of the draft… The Lions own “draft” of Army cadet Caleb Campbell. A day two selection, talk of selecting Campbell became a sports talk show host’s dream. While the draft seemed to cover some of the many holes in Ford Field, a number of selections seemed to be out of place. The first two picks (Cherilus, Dizon) were way too high to be selected by the Lions with those picks. While I think Kevin Smith and Andre Fluellen will end up to be decent players – the team did not get the tremendous impact players they were so desperately seeking. The Lions brass often comes across as that one guy during a MLB fantasy draft who picks a middle reliever with the first pick since they fear that a run will be had on the Zach Miners and Jonathan Albaladejos. Our city’s team has officially become “that guy” to the entire NFL. 
A different story
by Jeff Lutz on