When Ndamukong Suh said last week that "football is football and business is business," there was no accounting for blurred lines. Yet there are plenty. He has crisscrossed them. And so have the Detroit Lions.
Ndamukong Suh’s future in Detroit is blurry
The Detroit Lions once saw their defensive line as the team’s defensive foundation, centered around Ndamukong Suh. They’d like to keep Suh around, but can they afford to keep him around?
Tim Fuller-USA TODAY Sports
Suh burst in with the Lions in 2010 from Nebraska as the draft's No. 2 overall pick. His plan was to help guide Detroit to frequent playoff paradise. But his Lions teams have gone 6-10, 10-6, 4-12 and 7-9 with only one playoff game, a 17-point wild-card loss to the New Orleans Saints after his second season.
From a 2011 Thanksgiving Day stomp of a Green Bay Packer to persistent labels that he is a cheap shot player, Suh has endured burdens, both self-inflicted ones and external blows. He has been forced to deal with it and manage it. It increases his innate leeriness and cautiousness. Some call it a natural callousness and coldness -- a smugness and constant emphasis on his intellect that he never wants you to forget or devalue.
Those closest to him just call it Ndamukong being Ndamukong. They understand it. They appreciate it.
They see no blurred lines.
The Lions are on his second head coach since his arrival. The owner, William Clay Ford, Sr., who approved his initial selection, died last March. Suh had changed agents two months before that. His relationship and tenure with the Lions have been under constant construction, including his contract, which expires after this season. It has been reshuffled twice and in such severe ways that, entering this season, his salary was big (nearly $13 million) and his cap hits now and next year are big (more than $35 million over two seasons).
So, during the offseason, Suh and the Lions talked about a relationship beyond this, their fifth season together. A new deal for a new day.
Little wonder it went, in the end, nowhere.
Looks like Suh is looking for more change.
Looks like the Lions are, too.
But there is a season left to play under the old deal, a season that could have become a tangled mess had Suh or the Lions allowed it. It could have become spiteful and spilled directly into the locker room and onto the field.
It has not.
Because the way Suh sees it, football is football and business is business.
He leaves it to others to see blurred lines.
We will not make it about one guy's contract. Our desire is to keep the players that have a desire to be here. -Lions general manager Martin Mayhew
Even the ones that indicate the Jets, in part, have remained $20 million under the salary cap knowing this player might indeed be free in 2015 and that he wants them and they want him.
“We have a number of players that will be free agents next year, not just Ndamukong,” Lions general manager Martin Mayhew said. “We will not make it about one guy’s contract. Our desire is to keep the players that have a desire to be here. We will deal with that at the appropriate time. We will not let that be a distraction. I am not interested in what may happen six months from now.”
But even Mayhew got a chuckle out of Suh’s football/business mantra.
“When I heard that, I thought of the movie North Dallas Forty, the line in there that says, `Every time I call it a game you call it a business and every time I call it a business you call it a game.’”
Blurred lines.
Suh, at least for this season, wants to do for the Lions what he came to do: win.
Jim Schwartz, his old head coach, arrived in Detroit on Sunday to teach old players new tricks as the Buffalo Bills' defensive coordinator. Schwartz's new defense in Buffalo rose above his old one in Detroit in the Bills' 17-14 victory. Schwartz downplayed the reunion before the game, but allowed his players to carry him off the field on their shoulders after it.
More blurred lines.
The Lions (3-2) play at the Minnesota Vikings next, and Suh and the rest of Detroit's front four seek a return to their goal of domination.
This front four is out to create its own story. Lions defensive end Jason Jones recently said so. He included the entire Detroit defense. But it anchors on tackles Suh and Nick Fairley and ends Jones and Ezekiel Ansah.
A Fabulous Four.
Mayhew on his Fab Four
On Ansah: "He is really a freak athletically. He ran the 200 meters during his days at BYU. He is still learning the game of football. He is improving as a player. He brings physical skills that few do. Plays hard and hustles. He is developing as an equally strong pass rusher and run stopper. The arrow on him is up."On Fairley: "Disruptive, athletic. Quick-twitch athlete. He has responded to early challenges in his career. He’s got his weight down. He’s not dealing with fatigue. He’s not taking plays off. He goes hard. He gets into the backfield."
On Suh: "Dominating physically. One of the more powerful players in our league. Destructive. He plays more like a John Stockton in basketball. He is setting everyone else up. Nick, Jason, they get a lot of one-on-ones because of him being double-teamed. He frees linebackers with his double teams."
On Jones: "Experienced veteran. Great on run defense. He is destroying tight ends. He really handles tight ends on the strong side. He sets the edge on our defense. I looked at him as more of an inside guy when we got him. But he shows up on the outside. He bats balls down. He is an effective rusher. And he gets push on the quarterback."
One capable of wrecking offenses. One that yearns to take this Buffalo loss and Schwartz's schooling as fuel for future victories.
This front four leads a defense that ranks No. 1 in the NFL in average yards allowed per game (282.4) and No. 2 in scoring defense (15.8 points allowed per game).
The Lions have dissected and employed the formula of recent Super Bowl champions: if possessing a quality quarterback is essential to title hopes, then constantly harassing and belting the opposing one with your defensive line is just as vital. And if your defensive line is not the key cog in thwarting the run game, you have a lame one.
"When I think of Seattle's Legion of Boom, I think of the way they played up front,'' Mayhew said. "They dominated people and got after people up front. The Giants and (general manager) Jerry Reese did a great job of building their Super Bowl teams on defense up front.
“One of the things that was tough on me when we went 0-16 (in 2008) was that we really had a hard time stopping the run. We were small, older and didn’t get push up front. When you play in the NFC North and you play outside in cold-weather games, you had better get bigger up front and make that area a priority. It’s no accident that we have. We have three first-round picks there by design. And we will continue to draft with that in mind. It’s part of our philosophy. And those guys right now are really playing well.”
Suh, Fairley (2011) and Ansah (2013) are first-round Lions picks. Jones, a Lions free-agent signee last season, was a Tennessee Titans 2008 second-round pick, the 54th player overall selected.
Ansah is 25 years old. Fairley is 26. Suh is 27. Jones is 28. Ansah is in his second season, Fairley his fourth and Jones his seventh.
They average 6’4½, 292 pounds.
This group is leading Detroit’s ability to immobilize running games and make offenses one-dimensional. That helps wreak havoc on quarterbacks, and boosts the team’s average-talent secondary to play more boldly. The Bills managed to crack the formula -- winning on a 58-yard field goal with four seconds remaining -- but the Lions believe they are built this season for the long haul.
The line is tutored by two defensive line coaches (Jim Washburn and Kris Kocurek), an oddity in the NFL. New Lions defensive coordinator Teryl Austin keeps his imprint on the four. So does new head coach Jim Caldwell.
The style being taught is blunt.
“The first thing we preach to our group is to attack and play as fast as they possibly can for 60 minutes,” Kocurek said. “Pressure the offensive linemen. Pressure the quarterback. And give attitude throughout that whole process. We rotate eight to nine guys in there each game. We try to keep them fresh and fast so they can go hard. We want them to play really fast.”
Receivers and running backs and cornerbacks are routinely asked to play fast. Defensive linemen are not often given this instruction.
“No, we want them to go,” Kocurek said. “We want them to push each other. They strive off competition. Hopefully they are just getting started, just scratching the surface. They work our offensive linemen in practice. We believe iron sharpens iron. It is making both units stronger.”
Suh and the Lions have kept blurred lines from becoming fault lines. They need receiver Calvin Johnson (ankle) healthy and this defensive line to rule. The message must remain cogent.
“Our defensive line group started bonding back in OTAs,” Kocurek said. “They were serious. They knew it would be a new coaching staff. They knew they had to come together as a group. The guys grew closer and together. The more you work, the more you push each other, the more you trust each other, the stronger the group is going to be.
“And the group is greater than any one part. When you have that mindset, you give great effort. The way football is supposed to be played is that when it is all said and done, it’s not the dollars you make, because you will make dollars. It’s the legacy you left in how you approached the game, played the game and produced that lasts.”
The Lions want to keep it that simple. That clear.
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