According to the National Football Post, Zack Follett has been placed on Injured Reserve after that nasty helmet to helmet hit against the Giants. This isn't his first concussion and after seeing him carted off on the field, I'm glad that he is healthy and still has the potential to make a full recovery. Here's to Zack making it back in time for next season and bringing the pain for a long and healthy career. 

According to Pro football talk, Matt Stafford will miss at least 2-3 weeks and as many as 4-6. Obviously take this with a grain of salt because Florio is quick to run with a story and is often wrong, but it's the first thing I've heard about our quarterback. I think Shaun Hill showed today that we're in serious trouble without him. An MRI is pending and hopefully we'll know more soon. And I don't know about you guys but I'm still pissed. I've seen the replay about 66 times now and I just can't fathom how that's not a TD.

Schefter just posted an extended postcard from Lions training camp on his twitter account. In it he recounts the Schwartz story about wanting Best after seeing his highlight clips as well as a few bullet points on Stafford, the secondary and Mr. Irrelevant, Tim Toone. Not much about Suh in there, hopefully he's in by tomorrow. I'm about to hit submit and by the time this actually posts I am sure that at least 2 or 3 other PODers will have already posted it but here goes. 

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Free Press photo gallery of the Lions annual golf tourney. I am gonna go out on a limb and say most of the guys are slightly out of their element, except for maybe Jason Hanson. All I could think of was how much fabric went into that polo that the House of Spears was rocking.

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In case everyone doesn't want to click through the whole thing, check out this pic featuring Jeff GalifiaBackus Link

Delmas didn't even get any votes which is bull shit. I'd say that this would be good motivation for the Missile but I think he's shown that he doesn't need more motivation. He's already borderline unbalanced. Stats wise I think Jairus Byrd probably gets the nod over Delmas but if the writers actually watched any of the Lions games last season (which I'm fairly sure they didn't) they would've seen how good this guy is even though he is surrounded by a bunch of guys on their way out of league. 

Story: 

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/football/nfl/05/12/cushing.ap/index.html?eref=twitter_feed

This morning on the Jim Rome show, coach Schwartz was talking about Mr. Irrelevant, Tim Toone and told a story about how Toone was taken hostage while on his mission in West Africa. He was short on the details and I listened to it in my car a couple hours so I don't remember everything that was said but clearly, this dude has gone through some shit that most of us never have and never will. This experience certainly doesn't guarantee him a spot on the roster but like Schwartz said, after going through that, I don't think he's gonna be scared to go across the middle. 

So the other day I asked Zack Follett if Jahvid Best was as fast as DeSean Jackson and he said that Jahvid was faster. Now I figured at some point in their shared time at Cal, Best and Jackson had to have some form of race and I sought out to find it. Now, Jahvid was a fairly highly touted prospect coming into Cal and DeSean was a Junior Heisman sleeper during Jahvid's freshman season. Somehow video of these two racing each other hasn't found its way onto youtube which is kind of upsetting but I did find a few things in my quest that I thought I'd share. First is a highlight video  of the Colorado State vs Cal game from 07 when Jahvid was a freshman. On the field for Cal was Desean, Justin Forsett and Jahvid, or the most terrifying thing the CSU defense ever encountered. Jahvid takes a long one to the house around the 2 minute mark, shaking a couple tackles. (also, Tyson Alualu has 2 sacks so maybe Jacksonville was on to something)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syFTkLPqH4A

The next thing I found in my search was from the Cal SBNation site, which was a summary of Jahvid's career and how much they're going to miss him. It's full of anecdotes about how great a teammate Jahvid is, how he suffered from inconsistent QB and line play and some video highlights throughout. 

http://www.californiagoldenblogs.com/2010/4/20/1430085/remembering-the-jahvid-best-jahvid

Just thought everyone might like to see all this. And note to coach Schwartz, I'm a little bit aroused too. 

"With some of the other weapons we've added on offense, and with a quarterback that we drafted last year, we have the makings of some firepower. He's a guy that can go the distance, we struggled with 20+ yard runs last year. He's got a lot of em. The folks at youtube are very happy because of a lot of people googlin on Suh's highlights and this guy's highlights. If you checked my internet records, you'd see me hit them quite a lot too. If it hadn't been for that time he landed on his head, we wouldn't even be talking about him at this time in the draft."

Killer's question: something something Calvin and Best, what do you see?

"The makings of some special things, this was a player that we had a lot of really good feeling. We had a plan for exactly how we're gonna use him on offense. Again, I was hoping for two things in this draft. One is to be able to get him, Jahvid Best I mean. And two, if we weren't able to get him, just prayin that he didn't go to Green Bay or Minnesota or Chicago and have to defend a guy like this. We see a lot of tricked up defenses to try to stop Calvin. A running back that can beat a guy 1 on 1 can raise hell with those kind of coverages. He's a home run threat, a human highlight film and has some special abilities... A lot of people mentioned Spiller as being the fastest guy in the draft, Jahvid Best ran a better 40 time at the combine, won the 100 meters in the state of California, he was productive right away at Cal. He's returned kicks, has great hands and is an all around great player and we have a QB that can give him the ball."

I'm tired of transcribing this cuz I don't quite type fast enough to keep up so here's the link http://www.detroitlions.com/media-center/audio/Jim-Schwartz-on-RB-Jahvid-Best----4-22-10/c1a1d1e1-c38d-4db2-a87a-526151c3b448

Adam Schefter is reporting the Lions traded Ernie Sims to the Eagles, we get TE Tony Scheffler from the Broncos and the Broncos get an undisclosed draft pick. I guess we needed a tight end with Pettigrew coming back from an ACL tear but I would've liked to keep Ernie. With Foote walking, Julian getting older and now Sims gone, our linebacking corps is a major question mark. I guess that'll have to be a target in the draft now. Here's the link to Schefter's tweet: https://twitter.com/Adam_Schefter

Zakarian Follett is clearly one unbalanced dude and his twitter feed often portrays this. Actually, he mostly just links to stuff that he's doing (like the lion video stuff) but the other day he had an autographed Calvin jersey that he was selling on his website for like 120 bucks. Suffice it to say, it would've been mine but somebody had already bought it. The cool thing is he makes an effort to reply to everybody who says something to him, although that may change somewhat as he gets more followers. He's also been talking draft lately including endorsing Suh with the number two pick and this, "would def take javid in the 2nd if we have the chance.. fastest player iv seen on a football field.. deshawn jackson couldnt see him" Take this for what its worth, which certainly isn't a lot, but I think it is a cool way to interact with a guy who is willing to interact with us. And i really wanted that fucking autographed Calvin Jersey.

https://twitter.com/ZakarianFollett

Per rome's twitter feed: @jimrome "Headed to Detroit. LIve from WDFN- AM 1130 tomorrow. Lions' Jim Schwartz and Zack Follett in studio. Plus Rick Mahorn & Brian Rafalski" In studio means they should be around for the better part of the show, i.e. more time for schwartz to explain how he's the savior and for follett to demonstrate his insanity.

-400 Rome asks Follett if he's unbalanced (which he most definitely is)

I know it's spring training but there has to be video somewhere right? I'm more of a quiet observer on Talking Chop for awhile but with the Heyward Legend continuing to grow I thought I'd jump in. Honestly, I expect him to basically set the world on fire for the first month of the season, then major league pitching to somewhat consistently get him out to the tune of some mid season ups and downs but still a ROY campaign. I think the o/u on his BA and homers should be about .278 and 17.5 and I expect him to be over the former but not necessarily the latter. Anyway, just thought I'd jump in with some thoughts on the next Braves stud and if anyone has come across the video, I'd love to see it.

Do we have any idea how it is structured? I know it's 4 years and 26 million total with 10 the first season as reported by Sean here:

UPDATE II: KVB will reportedly make $10 million in the first year of his contract.

UPDATE: Adam Schefter is reporting that KVB's deal is worth $26 million.

So that leaves 16 million over the last 3 and we still haven't even got into how much is actually guaranteed. While this is may be a big number at face value, depending on how we set it up, we could be in position to get out of the KVB contract if he doesn't perform. Not that I'm not excited to have him but he is getting up there and I'm glad we have an out if it comes to that.

According to the fine folks at profootballtalk.com, Schefter was on the radio today and basically said Kiper and McShay were retarded and that everyone he talks to says that the Rams want a QB and they like Bradford. I don't think this is terribly surprising and I think it means the Man Named Suh might be in Honolulu blue (see what I did there?). But until draft day, I'm gonna take any guarantees with a massive grain of salt. Furthermore, this solidifies my belief that Jimmy Clausen sucks and is Jimmy Harrington, the second coming.

PFT story: http://bit.ly/bi9sGa

Why Jimmy Clausen is a Douche bag and a loser: http://yepyep.gibbs12.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/claussen.jpg

I remember this being brought up a few times in speculation about the Lion's activity in free agency. However, it's nice to know that someone who actually knows what they are talking about actually agrees with us. Assuming we take a D tackle at #2, that gives us a starting front of Avril, SLH, Suh or Mccoy and Vanden Bosch with Grady Jackson and Dewayne White's corpses thrown in there from time to time. I don't think we're going to ride that unit to the Super Bowl, but compared to the poo poo platter we've had in recent years, it gets me fired up for next season.

According to the Lions website, they are lowering 19,000 ticket prices. Even if the price reduction isn't huge, I think the symbolic gesture of lowering prices is good for the Lions image. As a displaced fan in Idaho, season ticket prices aren't a big deal to me but what say the rest of POD? quote from Lewand:

"We are very appreciative of the extraordinary support of our fans," said Lions President Tom Lewand. "Their passion for this team is among the best of any professional sports franchise. Over the past two seasons we have offered several ticket options with the hope that more Lions' fans will have the opportunity to attend games at Ford Field. We believe this is another positive and more affordable option for our fans"

http://deadspin.com/5461488/the-one-where-some-vindictive-lady-sends-us-pictures-of-matthew-stafford-making-out-with-his-girlfriend

Does anyone really care about this? Obviously, this counts as news in the days of deadspin and I clicked on the shit so I probably can't complain but all i can think of is leave the guy alone. Maybe he could find a better place to make out with his girlfriend but he didn't do anything wrong, just out having a good time. It just looks like more pictures for Schwartz to make fun of him with next season.

Also, the look on shiancoe's face is priceless...