As Lions coach Jim Schwartz prepares to commence his first season as an NFL head coach, he’ll be working for the only team that managed to play 16 regular-season games without winning a single one of them.
As to that abysmal record from a year ago, Schwartz simply has chosen to ignore it.
"[W]e haven’t talked about last year, quite honestly,” Schwartz told Terry Foster of the Detroit News. “We’ve moved on past that. I think that’s the nature of this league. It doesn’t matter what you did last year, whether it was good or bad. You prove yourself every day in this league.
“It probably makes it a little bit easier when there are new faces -- guys coming from different teams that have experienced different things. We have one guy coming off a Super Bowl win; guys come in with a lot of different experiences from last year. So I think it all helps. It helps to have a new coaching staff, that dynamic helps change it, but it doesn’t change the fact that you have to prove yourself everyday in this league.”
But while the recent past will be ignored, Schwartz plans to reach out to players like Herman Moore, Lomas Brown, and Robert Porcher, who believe (per Foster’s question) that they have been shut out by the team.
“When I was in Cleveland we used to see Jim Brown,” Schwartz said. “You would see Brian Sipe and Bernie Kosar. Players need to know who came before them. They need to know who blazed a trail before them. In Baltimore we used to have Johnny Unitas and Lenny Moore, Lydell Mitchell and Raymond Barry -- guys with instant credibility.
“In Tennessee we didn’t have that. They didn’t have pro sports in that town. I missed that. I think number one those guys can provide players with [perspective]. It’s not all about them. It’s about guys who came before them.”
Maybe, someday, Schwartz and Matthew Stafford and Kevin Smith and Calvin Johnson will be the guys providing perspective for the next generation of Lions players.
And maybe they’ll be doing so with a big-ass ring on their fingers.
And maybe they’ll get those rings sooner rather than later.
Hey, the only thing that the 2009 Lions have in common with last year’s model is the “0" in the wins column. And that “0-0" record carries plenty of hope and potential, for every team in every year.
Even for a team that was stuck on that “0" for an entire season.
