Carlos MonarrezDetroit Free Press
It was a simple, straightforward question. But Aaron Glenn preferred to dodge it and, in doing so, raised a concern that’s been hovering over his tenure as the Detroit Lions’ defensive coordinator.
This was the question I posed to Glenn last week: When the team commits the resources of the top two picks in the NFL draft to help the defense, especially in the secondary, how much more pressure do you feel to make sure you use those resources are used effectively?
Glenn’s deflection began immediately as he seemed to retreat to his playing days, acting like a cornerback in his backpedal and treating me like a pesky receiver he had to thwart by any means necessary.
“It’s the NFL,” he said. “It’s always pressure. So that doesn't matter to me.
“Any time we get players on his team, you try to put them in position to do what they do best. So as a player, as a coordinator, man, this is the NFL. Each week there's pressure.”
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Sure there is. But that wasn’t the question. The question was about the extra pressure Glenn might, and frankly, should be feeling after the Lions used their top two picks, including moving up in the first round, to draft defensive backs Terrion Arnold and Ennis Rakestraw to bolster Glenn’s struggling secondary.
It’s the third straight year the Lions have spent a first-round pick on a defensive player, and those investments need to start paying off with a lot more production out of these high picks besides what Aidan Hutchinson has contributed.
What’s strange about Glenn’s perspective is that he claimed some ownership of the decision to draft Arnold and Rakestraw. When he was asked if he had input in their selections, Glenn smirked.
“Well,” he said, “I hope I would as the defensive coordinator.”
Curiously, Glenn then chose to pretend the selections of Arnold and Rakestraw weren’t intentionally focused on beefing up the secondary, but rather just a stroke of happenstance.
“You know,” he said, “sometimes you think just because you drafted a guy that there was a soft spot at that point. No, you just drafted the best guy. And then you just create competition for your team.”
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Football coaches love to spin their feel-good narrative about competition and meritocracies. But that’s a fantasy in the NFL, where high draft picks and big-money free agents have a massive leg up on their counterparts by nature of the resources the team has spent to acquire them, not to mention the jobs and reputations at stake of the personnel decision-makers. While J.J. McCarthy could beat out Cade McNamara in college, Hendon Hooker could throw 50 touchdown passes in the preseason and he’s not starting over Jared Goff.
Maybe Glenn believes it’s part of his job to relieve some of the mounting pressure on his young players and to distract everyone from the subpar performance he has gotten out of his cornerbacks, which should be an indictment for a coach who was a three-time Pro Bowler at the position.
But then again, maybe it makes all the sense in the world for Glenn. He seems to live in a different reality than other NFL coaches. His scoring defense has been among the NFL’s worst two out of the past three years, yet he keeps getting interview requests for head coaching jobs.
The Lions’ scoring defense rankings have shown only modest improvement each year under Glenn, going from No. 31 to No. 28 to No. 23. At this rate, Glenn will be the proud owner of a top-10 scoring defense in 2029. Year 9 is gonna be the time, A.G.!
And of the 12 defensive players the Lions have drafted under Glenn in the past three years, only Hutchinson has made the Pro Bowl once. In that same time, the 10 offensive players the Lions drafted have been to the Pro Bowl six times.
I can’t imagine what NFL owners are asking Glenn during his head coaching interviews, though a reasonable assumption might be: “Do you have Ben Johnson’s number?”
Look, I don’t want to be too hard on Glenn. I think he works hard and has his players’ respect. The defense did improve toward the end of the season. That’s not nothing. But now that the Lions are firmly entrenched in their playoff window, all that matters is consistent, high-caliber performance and not just attaboy gamely efforts that fall short.
Still, the reality in the NFL is that there tends to be a steep learning curve for rookie cornerbacks who play on the outside. Glenn has already spoken with Arnold about this very thing.
“Once you get into the NFL you’re play a top-notch player every week and he has to understand that there's no weeks off, you know?” Glenn said. “You're not playing Eight Back State now. You're playing a quality NFL receiver every week.
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“And he's gonna get his lumps, just like Rakestraw. They’re gonna get their lumps.”
That’s funny. It sure sounds like Glenn is telling the Lions’ top two draft picks they’re going to feel some extra pressure this year. Let’s hope they aren’t the only ones.
Contact Carlos Monarrez: cmonarrez@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@cmonarrez.
