| Detroit Free Press
Assessing Detroit Lions’ coach, GM searches as regular season ends
Free Press sports writers Dave Birkett and Carlos Monarrez debate Jan. 4, 2021, who the Detroit Lions should hire as general manager and head coach.
Carlos Monarrez and Dave Birkett, Detroit Free Press
If Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields’ impressive performance against Clemson in the College Football Playoff semifinal wasn’t enough to entice the Detroit Lions to draft him, maybe a resounding endorsement from his former teammate is.
Fields threw six touchdowns for the Buckeyes in a 49-28 win over Trevor Lawrence and the Tigers at the Sugar Bowl on Friday while playing through a ribcage injury. The win qualified Ohio State for the national championship game Monday against Alabama, and it could have improved Fields’ stock for the 2021 NFL draft.
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Lawrence is a lock to be the No. 1 overall pick by the Jacksonville Jaguars. After that, either Fields or Brigham Young’s Zach Wilson is expected to the be next quarterback drafted. But where and by who remains a mystery with many moving parts.
The Lions could be in play for a quarterback with the No. 7 overall pick. A long vetting process will be part of any evaluation. And Lions cornerback Jeff Okudah, the No. 3 overall pick last year, offered his team a little scouting report on his teammate Monday in a conference call with reporters. The two played together in 2019, when Fields passed for 41 touchdowns and ran for 10 more.
“I would say prototypical young quarterback because he’s all about football,” Okudah said of Fields. “I think that the kind of flashiness that he plays with, the electricity that he plays with, you might think that his mind might be elsewhere sometimes.
“But knowing Justin, he doesn’t care about all that. He just puts his head down, he works throughout the week and then you see the results on game day.”
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One aspect working against Fields is the poor record of Ohio State’s drafted quarterbacks that extends decades. Most recently was Dwayne Haskins, a Buckeyes teammate of Okudah’s in 2017-18 who has struggled on the field and off it with Washington since he was drafted 15th overall in 2019.
Okudah was asked if Fields was different in his dedication to the game than Haskins and he tried to avoid comparing the two players.
“I wouldn’t say different than Haskins,” he said. “I would say everyone’s different.”
Contact Carlos Monarrez at cmonarrez@freepress.com and follow him on Twitter @cmonarrez.