The Detroit Lions made some coaches available to reporters on Wednesday on a conference call that included offensive line Hank Fraley, who has three first-round draft picks on his unit and will be in charge of guiding the career of the team’s prized first-round pick, Penei Sewell.
Also included on the call was Antwaan Randle El, who is in his first year as a receivers coach, has de facto starters in two veteran castoffs on one-year contracts and a fourth-round pick.
If the conference call were a book, it would have been “To Have and Have Not.” If it were a TV miniseries, it would have been “Rich Man, Poor Man.”
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You can always tell what kind of expectations a coach senses for his players. If he plays down expectations, you know they’re high. If he pumps up his players’ potential, the bar is low.
Fraley actually admitted “expectations in our room are high,” but he steered clear of quantifying that when he was asked if the offensive line had the potential to be among the NFL’s top-five units.
“We have a chance,” he said. “We can be as good as we want to be with what we put into it. I know the young man we did add, Penei, there’s a lot of expectations for him. … He should help us out. He’s just another piece of the puzzle.”
Frankly, Sewell needs to be a lot more than that because the offensive line needs to be the backbone of the Lions as they enter the first year of a lengthy rebuild.
No one likes to add undue pressure to a rookie, but it’s going to be there for Sewell because if the Lions are going to show any sign of promise this year, it’s going to start with the offensive line. The unit boasts an excellent left tackle in Taylor Decker, a Pro Bowl center in Frank Ragnow and a promising third-round left guard in Jonah Jackson. The Lions have so much depth on the O-line that they’re reportedly looking to trade promising young tackle Tyrell Crosby, who started 11 games last year.
Then you have the Randle El and his receivers. And just like that we go from the offensive line puzzle that has too many good pieces to a group of receivers that resembles the Island of Misfit Toys.
Before I get into all the receivers who are looking for somebody to love them as they work on their next contracts, let me say this was the first time reporters got to speak with Randle El and I immediately liked him for lamenting the late start he got to his coaching career because he and wife were occupied having six kids. Yes, six.
Randle El was an offensive assistant the past two seasons with Tampa Bay, and extra credit goes to whoever wrote his biography for the Lions’ website, which states that he “helped lead the Buccaneers to a 31-9 win over the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LV.” It reminds me of Michael Jordan scoring 69 points against Cleveland, Bulls rookie Stacey King chipping in one point and then saying: “I’ll always remember this as the night that Michael Jordan and I combined to score 70 points.”
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Back to the receivers. The Lions are simply going to struggle at this position, though Randle El played up the idea of familiarity with Breshad Perriman. They were together with the Bucs in 2019 when Perriman had a good season playing behind Pro Bowlers Chris Godwin and Mike Evans.
This will be Randle El’s first year in charge of a position group and he believes having a player like Perriman who’s familiar with his teaching style will help the other receivers.
“So that’s another guy from off the books so to speak where you don’t have to learn the ins and outs of how everybody learns,” he said. “But you go through that process. You find out how everybody learns and you make sure you teach to that and it helps them out for sure.”
Randle El also praised Amon-Ra St. Brown, the fourth-round draft pick from Southern Cal whose brother, Equanimeous, plays for the Green Bay Packers. Randle El calls St. Brown “Saint” and already has sensed his precocious nature.
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“Saint comes in from a standpoint of he’s got a background, he’s got a history, he’s going to be hardnosed,” he said. “And you see that right up front even from a standpoint of understanding coverage and just really asking questions about certain plays and things of that nature.
“So you see it already. You see what’s kind of been there, that pedigree that’s been there. So you expect it. So everything that I expect he’s been giving to me and a little bit more, I can add that as well. And that’s always a plus as a coach.”
There’s always hope this time of year in the NFL. Every team thinks it has a chance to write its own happy ending. For some Lions, it will be the best of times and for others the worst. But we should all just be satisfied if the team can avoid looking like a confederacy of dunces.
Contact Carlos Monarrez at cmonarrez@freepress.com and follow him on Twitter @cmonarrez.