Bob Quinn’s 10 worst decisions as the Lions GM

The Bob Quinn era is over in Detroit. After five years of increasingly disappointing outcomes, the Lions fired the general manager after Thursday’s humiliating loss to the Houston Texans on national television.

Quinn had some positives during his reign, to be sure. But he’s out of Detroit because the negatives outweighed them, quite dramatically in some cases.

With some input from fellow Lions Wire editor Erik Schlitt, here are the 10 worst decisions Bob Quinn made during his run as the Lions GM.

10. Drafting a long snapper

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It's rare that an NFL team drafts a long snapper. Just six long snappers were selected between 2000-2016, when Quinn opted to spend the 210th overall pick on Baylor's Jimmy Landes. Never mind that the Lions already had venerable veteran Don Muhlbach on the roster, or a promising young TE convert in Jordan Thompson who appeared to have upward mobility at the time. Quinn had to use a pick in his rookie draft class--the signature of his early regime--on a long snapper. Landes never made the Lions. He was injured in training camp and spent 2016 on I.R. He didn't even make it to minicamp the next season and his NFL career was over. Never get in a land war in Asia or draft a long snapper. Sixth-round picks are crapshoots, no doubt. But among the players drafted after Landes in that sixth round of 2016: OL Ted Karras, LB Elandon Roberts, S Kavon Frazier and S Will Parks. All are still starting in the NFL today.

9. Cutting Eric Ebron with no Plan B

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No Lions fan bemoans Quinn for getting rid of Eric Ebron. Quinn correctly read both the papers and the locker room in dumping the former first-round tight end in early 2018. It's how Quinn did it that deserves the ridicule. Less than 10 months after picking up the fifth-year option on Ebron's contract, Quinn cut Ebron. There was never any discussions of trades from any sources, zero talks of any possible shopping during the scouting combine the week prior to the move. It felt like Quinn woke up on a cold Wednesday morning and just decided, "Let's cut Ebron." Here's what was left of the Lions TE room after dumping Ebron for nothing: Michael Roberts, Hakeem Valles, Brandon Barnes Quinn would sign Luke Willson in free agency a week later, and Levine Toilolo shortly thereafter when the Falcons cut him. Again, getting rid of Ebron wasn't a bad choice in and of itself. But cutting him outright months after you picked up the option on his contract just screams, "I have no plan!" Ebron would make the Pro Bowl with the Colts, catching 66 passes for 750 yards and 13 TDs. Lions tight ends caught 45 passes for 461 yards and 4 TDs combined. None remained on the team after 2018.

8. The Jesse James signing

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Perhaps in an attempt to cover up the stain of the Ebron mistake, Quinn overcompensated--quite literally--with free agent Jesse James. James was a decent No. 2 tight end for the Pittsburgh Steelers, a try-hard but athletically limited role player. He parlayed a 30-catch season in 2018 into a four-year, $22.6 million deal with Quinn and the Lions. At the time, that was a top-15 contract for a tight end. Yet Quinn doubled down right away by drafting T.J. Hockenson in the first round in the draft six weeks later. He also brought in another free agent, Logan Thomas. It was painfully obvious from the first two days of Lions training camp in 2019 that James was incapable of living up to the contract. Thomas emphatically outshined him as an athlete. It never got better for James his entire first season in Detroit. He caught 16 passes for 143 yards and was not nearly as good at blocking as advertised. Even worse, the contract was team-unfriendly. It will still cost the Lions over $4 million in dead salary cap room to dump James after 2020 if the new regime decides a pedestrian No. 2 tight end isn't worth a top-20 tight end contract. Two guys the Lions let go that offseason, Darren Fells and Robert Tonyan, are both demonstrably better than James and earn less than half of his annual salary combined. James has played better in 2020 but nearly enough to justify the financial commitment Quinn laid out to get him. And the mixed message Quinn sent by bringing in others to seemingly directly compete with him despite the lofty contract makes--while proven prudent in time--makes no sense.

7. Drafting Teez Tabor in the 2nd round

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Admit it, this is probably the Quinn move that first popped into your mind when you saw the title here. Spending a second-round pick in 2017 on the Florida cornerback certainly ranks highly on the Quinn ignominy list. Tabor had one of the worst NFL Scouting Combine workouts of any cornerback this century in 2017. He followed up a 4.63 40-yard dash time with a 4.68 on the second attempt. He measured shorter and heavier than expected, with short arms and small hands. Tabor also posted the second-fewest bench press reps at the event of any defensive back. Here's what NFL.com had to say at the time,

There were already concerns of Tabor being overhyped. His overall play declined in his final season after Florida running mate Vernon Hargreaves left for the NFL. Tabor claimed he was slowed by a lingering hamstring injury, which isn't exactly a good fallback excuse. None of that dissuaded Quinn, however. Tabor struggled with the hamstring as a rookie and played little in 10 games. He started four games in his second season and was clearly overwhelmed by the speed and suddenness of the NFL game. He hasn't played since, bouncing around practice squads and the unemployment line. Among the five players drafted after Quinn tagged Tabor at No. 53 overall: New York Giants DT Dalvin Tomlinson and Houston Texans LB Zach Cunningham. Each of those players would top the Lions current depth chart at their respective positions.

6. Failing to draft pass rushers

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Even when they still had Ezekiel Ansah healthy on one side, the Lions have sorely lacked pass rushing talent on the edges. Alas, Quinn never really tried to address that critical problem with draft capital. Here's the list of pass rushers/EDGEs that Quinn selected in his five draft classes: 2016 - Anthony Zettel, 6th round 2017 - Jeremiah Ledbetter, 6th round 2018 - Da'Shawn Hand, 4th round 2019 - Austin Bryant, 4th round 2020 - Julian Okwara, 3rd round; Jashon Cornell, 7th round Byrant and Okwara were both injured at the time they were drafted and (surprise!) remain injured. Cornell tore his Achilles in his first training camp. Hand has missed 18 games in his two-plus seasons, though when healthy he's been a solid value pick. Ledbetter has played 18 games with 0.5 sacks. The best pass rusher Quinn ever drafted was Zettel, a late-round afterthought who needed a stellar Shrine Game week to even get drafted. He had a magical second season (2017) with 6.5 sacks and 43 tackles. Since then he's played 20 total games while on five different NFL teams without recording another sack.

5. The wasted resources at running back

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This is an issue I wrote about earlier this season when the team cut Ty Johnson, and it's still maddening. Quinn's obsession with acquiring running backs and shuffling the deck has never stopped, and it's come at the expense of much-needed attention to other positions. Quinn proved successful at drafting running back talent once he started trying and replaced holdovers Theo Riddick, Ameer Abdullah and Zach Zenner. Kerryon Johnson was a good pick in the second round, a versatile talent. Injuries are an issue but he can play. D'Andre Swift looks like a second-round hit. Ty Johnson showed some promise as a rookie. Quinn also proved pretty adept at finding RB help off the street. LeGarrette Blount wound up being atrocious, but for a brief time he was effective in 2018. Tion Green. Justin Forsett. Bo Scarbrough. Adrian Peterson. Even if it was just for a week or two, Quinn wound up being pretty good at signing guys who could help at RB. He never committed to one direction or the other. The 2020 situation is a perfect example. Quinn drafted two RBs (Swift and Jason Huntley) while already having recent draft picks in Kerryon and Ty Johnson still around. Scarbrough was too. But then he saw Peterson was available and pounced. Huntley never made the team as a rookie fifth-round pick. Ty Johnson is a lost sixth-round pick. Those are minor in the grand scheme of things, but the grand scheme of things in Detroit also shows a roster with exactly one wide receiver on the roster--Quintez Cephus--when the 2020 season ends. Technically Geronimo Allison will be back if he chooses, but the important ones (Golladay, Marvin Jones, Amendola, Marvin Hall) are all pending free agents. Maybe one of those picks burned on RBs he absolutely didn't need could have become a keeper of a developmental project wide receiver, God forbid one with a little speed. Maybe he could have tried a pass rusher. Or a developmental quarterback. Or a linebacker with some speed. Because Quinn never chose a course of action with his running backs, he (in part) neglected other positions that could sorely use the help.

4. The draft aversion to speed at the skill positions

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Quinn found the Lions some talented players at the skill positions over the years. At wide receiver, Kenny Golladay was a big hit in the third round of the 2017 draft. Running backs Kerryon Johnson (2018) and D'Andre Swift (2020) are both good second-round picks, with Swift showing early potential to be an impact player. He's had some finds on the perimeter of the defense too. Amani Oruwariye is a solid starter after being a fifth-round pick in 2019. Tracy Walker has slumped badly in 2020, but the safety looked like an emerging star in his first two seasons as a third-round pick. First-rounder Jeff Okudah has taken his lumps but has also shown progress as a rookie. There's a common denominator with all those players, aside from them all being good Quinn draft picks overall. None are faster than average for their positions. It doesn't mean they're bad players or bad picks, it means the team focus isn't on speed. Many of the free agent acquisitions, guys like Marvin Jones, Danny Amendola, Anquan Boldin, Desmond Trufant, Trey Flowers at EDGE, LeGarrette Blount and Adrian Peterson at RB —none are blessed with speed. And that is a problem for a league trending towards speed on both offense and defense. The Lions simply can't match the speed with any other team at the skill positions. It limits the playmaking and explosiveness on both sides of the ball, and it's a problem that will carry over to a new regime. That's on Quinn for not prioritizing speed where speed matters.

3. The great guard snafu of 2020

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Quinn decided to let one of his draft success stories, right guard Graham Glasgow, depart in free agency. It was a justifiable choice based on the contract Glasgow, a slightly above-average, dependable but unspectacular guard, earned from the Denver Broncos. The four-year, $44 million deal with $26 million is a bad overpay by the Broncos. Good on Quinn for not putting that slop in his trough. However... The Lions went out and signed Halapoulivaati Vaitai in free agency. The move was made, and compensated, for "Big V" to play right tackle and replace Rick Wagner, a declining player Quinn also (smartly) let walk in free agency. Except the plan was flawed from the beginning. Vaitai was a backup for the Philadelphia Eagles, one they didn't feel good enough about at tackle that they drafted three other tackles in his final two years there. Playing left tackle in the Eagles matchup with the Lions in 2019, Vaitai was objectively terrible; it was plainly obvious he lacked the footwork and athleticism to play on the edge without TE help against speed pass rushers. He had some solid game tape and experience but floundered any time he was relied upon as a regular starter. Quinn paid him $45 million over five years anyway. Vaitai injured his foot before the season even started. In the process, Tyrell Crosby--a smart Quinn draft pick in the fifth round in 2018--turned out to be a very capable starting right tackle when (finally) given the chance. That kicked Vaitai inside to right guard... Except Quinn had already filled that hole with not one but two draft picks. Third-rounder Jonah Jackson was playing great early on. Veteran Joe Dahl was capable, too. The team also kept veteran Kenny Wiggins, a fan whipping boy but one who makes a perfectly serviceable No. 3 guard. Fourth-round pick Logan Stenberg was lucky to make the team because of the logjam. Vaitai took over at right guard and the entire line declined. He wasn't better than lightly-regarded journeyman backup Oday Aboushi; their Pro Football Focus scores are almost identical in close to the same number of snaps. Now Vaitai is hurt again and on I.R. Quinn didn't trust his prior decisions and considerable investment in the line. He didn't trust new offensive line coach Hank Fraley, who has been a home run hire that needs to stick no matter who the new head coach might be. It cost Quinn $45 million for a backup offensive lineman the team doesn't even need on a team where depth is embarrassingly thin on the defensive front.

2. The Damon Harrison/Golden Tate trade timing

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Let's go back to October of 2018. The Lions are 3-3 after winning two games in a row, with one of those wins over Aaron Rodgers and the Packers. In a bold, brilliant move, Quinn steals disgruntled defensive tackle Damon Harrison from the New York Giants for a future fifth-round draft pick. Harrison was exactly what the Lions defense needed, a block-eating presence in the middle of the line. This was the Lions aggressively going out and being a buyer, bolstering the lineup with an impact talent. Harrison was the best run defender in the NFL according to Pro Football Focus, and he quickly proved it in Detroit, too. That move came on October 25th. Five days later, Quinn traded away starting wide receiver Golden Tate to the Philadelphia Eagles for a third-round pick. All the buzz, all the positivity about the Lions gearing up for a potential playoff surge immediately died. Quinn went from poised buyer to panicked seller in less than a week. The 3-3 start turned into a 6-10 finish. The Lions offense had scored three or more TDs in five of the first six games with Tate as a prominent feature. They scored three TDs in just two games afterward, one of those the 31-0 finale against the Packers that Green Bay didn't even try to win. The reaction in the Lions locker room to the Tate trade right after getting "Snacks" was akin to a glorious pinata at a kid's birthday party, but when it broke open rotten broccoli dropped out instead of candy. It was a completely tone-deaf move by Quinn. The team's morale, already shaky with an overbearing Matt Patricia as the rookie coach, never got out of the tailspin trading the popular Tate sent them into. Quinn tried to explain it in his postseason press conference as an offer too good to refuse for a player in Tate who he had already determined wasn't coming back with his pending free agency salary demands. The third-round pick wound up being No. 88, or 50 spots higher than the comp pick the Eagles received when Tate signed with the Giants. The players selected with both of those picks (the Lions traded the 88th pick) are already out of the NFL. For that, Quinn scuttled any hope from a budding playoff team. His locker room never recovered.

Honorable mentions

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Some of these tie in with other mistakes, while some stand on their own but don't rise to the level of being egregious enough to crack the top 10.

• Not trading Darius Slay before the 2019 season when it was clear Slay would not be back in 2020, especially given the frosty relationship between the team's best defensive player and the defensive-minded coach.

• Jahlani Tavai in the second round and Will Harris in the third in the 2019 draft. Both could be out of the NFL in 2021. As an admission, I supported the Tavai pick though it was higher than expected. On the other side of that coin, I saw Harris play in person in college and never once thought I was looking at an NFL player.

• The Quandre Diggs trade/situation.

• Drafting Jarrad Davis in the first round, a pick that the Lions locked in on very early (relatively speaking) in the 2017 draft; a Lions staffer told me after a Shrine Game practice in mid-January that Davis was "the top priority". I can't speak to how seriously they considered other options, but zeroing in on one specific player for the 20th pick three months ahead of time is reckless. And it would be if Davis was a good pick too. He's not.

• Failing to anticipate the old Matt Patricia spring break situation would ever be discovered. It's a complete non-story and I'm still ashamed of my colleagues who trumpeted it, but Quinn and the Lions got gobsmacked by something they should have been out in front of before it ever leaked out.

• Not realizing he needed a Director of Football Operations, which is a change I pray comes about with a new regime.

• Employing backup quarterbacks, primarily Matt Cassel and Chase Daniel, who do not have the physical tools (read: arm strength) to run the same offense Matthew Stafford does. It's pointless. He starkly overpaid for Daniel, too.

• Drafting Brad Kaaya in 2017, a move I know he made over the advice of his scouting department. It's a sixth-round pick so it's not a critical error, but Kaaya barely made it through training camp before being cut and some in the Lions scouting department told him that would be the case.

• Handling injured reserve in 2019. Keeping Stafford and others who were hurt and extremely unlikely to return on the active roster instead of adding much-needed depth by putting them on I.R. meant a lot of other guys played hurt too much. A director of football ops would've likely told Quinn that...

1. Having blinders for Matt Patricia

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Quinn jettisoned Jim Caldwell after his first two seasons running the Lions, two 9-7 seasons. Dumping Caldwell as the head coach was a popular move at the time, with Caldwell's team struggling with clock management, getting 11 players on the field on defense and failing to win games against good teams. There were several strong coaching candidates available in that 2018 offseason. Chief among them was Mike Vrabel, a player with some Patriots-era ties to Quinn who was thriving in Houston as a rising defensive coaching star. Frank Reich and Matt Nagy were prominent offensive minds who offered the ability to maximize QB Matthew Stafford. There were some cursory overtures towards others, but Quinn had his man in Matt Patricia. It was a poorly-kept secret that Quinn wanted the rocket scientist who was in charge of New England's defense to run the Lions. And so it was, Quinn sticking with his old friend despite no head coaching experience. Once Patricia was on board, the QuinnTricia regime was a monolithic beacon of negative energy and failure. Quinn seemingly indulged Patricia's every desire and value, including the disdain for talented players with personality. If Quinn ever objected to Patricia running players out of Detroit, he never stopped it as the one man with the power to do so. It's one thing to take Tammy Wynette's advice and stand by your man. It's another to overly enable him and not try to correct his mistakes, slitting your own professional throat in the process.