Peter King Changes tone on Detroit Lions
Peter King lost a lost of respect from Detroit Lions fans when he ranked the team in the lower half of the league earlier in the offseason.
The Lions, who are coming off of a playoff berth and an 11-5 record were ranked 17th by King while the division rival Vikings, coming off a losing record at 7-9, were ranked 6th overall.
As crazy as the ranking from King was, his logic was even worse. King cited that “if two or three vital things go right” that the Vikings could be a team on the rise.
If two or three vital things happen– like the starting quarterbacks of the Steelers and Ravens suffer season ending injuries, and Johnny Manziel‘s style of play suddenly works in the NFL–I think the Browns could be a team on the rise too in their division.
Luckily for King, he was able to make up some ground with Lions fans when he visited the Lions training camp himself.
Here’s what King had to say about his trip to Allen Park:
"All along, I’ve had this thought that Minnesota would be my surprise team of the NFC. Then I came to Allen Park, Mich., to watch the Lions practice, and saw rookie back Ameer Abdullah run through everyone on defense, and watched one of the two or three most intense practices of our tour, and saw a healthy Calvin Johnson shred the defense like the pre-ankle-injury days. And I imagine that Caraun Reid and others we’ve never heard of can play well enough in the middle of the defensive line to soften the death blow of losing Ndamukong Suh."
I’m glad that King gave the Lions a clean slate. Sometimes, big-time personalities like King have a way of digging their hole deeper, but instead, he wrote what he saw, which seems to jive with everything else we’ve heard from Lions camp.
It’s also good that he mentioned Calvin Johnson looking like his old self.
As I’ve said all offseason, he had an ankle sprain, which isn’t a strong enough reason to assume he won’t continue to be Megatron. And just because he’s about to turn 30 doesn’t mean he won’t continue to be Megatron either. The truly great superstars like Adrian Peterson and Calvin Johnson, typically don’t fall under “normal” trends.
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