4. Detroit Lions
Bobby Ross's first training camp as coach of the Lions was unlike anything Detroit players had seen in recent years. Ross's predecessor, the ultraloose Wayne Fontes, would pick up kids in his golf cart and chauffeur them around the practice field to watch various drills. Camp Fontes may not have had a country-club atmosphere, but it was close. Camp Ross was intense to the point of being grim. After receivers dropped a couple of balls in a drill one day, Ross vented. "Start over!" he yelled. "The whole drill! We aren't doing this just to do it!"
The handful of players who tired of Fontes's easygoing style suddenly have hope with Ross and his equally tough assistants. "With this coaching staff," wideout Johnnie Morton says of the new mood in camp, "Detroit's not as cold anymore."
Not long after being named coach in January, Ross announced he was moving the club's training camp from the Silverdome 85 miles north to Saginaw. Under Fontes, players stayed at a hotel down the road from their training-camp site, but they weren't far away from the distractions of families and friends. Ross believes that getting away from the comforts of home helps the players to bond, not to mention toughen up.
Last season Detroit had one of the league's softest defensive fronts, a unit so porous that it offset perhaps the NFL's most lethal weapons. Imagine this: The Lions had Barry Sanders, who won his third league rushing title, and they still went 5-11, in large part because the opposition outrushed them by 12 yards a game. How was that possible?
"Well," says defensive end Robert Porcher, "we had that bend-but-don't-break philosophy, and unfortunately we bent quite a bit against the run. But all through training camp we've really been focused on the run. There's a lot of precision in our practice sessions. Coach Ross is into every little detail. He's not going to let us fail."
Indeed, after watching film from 1996, Ross was chagrined by how poorly the Lions tackled, how ineffective they were in shedding blockers and how undisciplined they were about staying in their rushing lanes. "The starting point for us to be a good team is stopping the run," Ross says. "It's strange, but when I looked at how they played last year, they were first in the league on yards per carry allowed on first down. You can be sure we'll be better. We have to be."
Sounds good, but this is mostly the same cast of characters that ranked 25th in the league against the run last year. (The notable exception is tackle Mike Wells, a fourth-year player who made one start in '96; he replaces Henry Thomas, who signed with the Patriots as a free agent.) The front seven players average only 263 pounds, and they could get manhandled by a couple of the NFC Central's bigger offensive lines. For instance, the Packers' front averages 300 pounds, the Vikings' a stouter 308.
Ross is counting on 291-pound tackle Luther Elliss, a first-round draft pick in '95 who started 30 games in his first two seasons, to plug some of the holes. "Elliss could be a big-time player," Ross says. "He reminds me of [Raiders Pro Bowl defensive tackle] Chester McGlockton."
Ross won a national championship at, of all places, Georgia Tech in 1990, and he took the overachieving Chargers to their first Super Bowl, in '94. Run defense was one of the reasons for the latter success.
"The players are not afraid of hard work, even though we might have gotten away from it," Porcher says. "If it's not demanded, when you get tired in the fourth quarter, you're not going to have it in you to play hard. That's how we'll be different. We'll have it in the fourth quarter."
That will mean something only if the Lions can stop the run in the first three quarters.—Peter King
SCHEDULE SKINNY
The Lions can't use the schedule as an excuse. Despite playing six games against teams that were in the playoffs last season, Detroit has the NFL's easiest schedule. Seven of the first eight games are against clubs that are expected to hover around or finish well below .500: the Falcons, the Buccaneers (twice), the Bears, the Saints, the Bills and the Giants. A soft November home stand (Vikings, Colts, Bears) could propel Detroit into wild-card contention. In a scheduling quirk the Lions, 1-7 away from the Silverdome in '96, have four pairs of back-to-back road games.
STRENGTH OF SCHEDULE
NFL rank: 30
Opponents' 1996 winning percentage: .465
Games against playoff teams: 6
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