Getty Eric Ebron reacts in a game.
The Detroit Lions have made plenty of draft mistakes through the years, and typically, the fans are the ones who understand these pitfalls the most.
Interestingly enough, a former general manager of the team now explains that he too understands the mistake he made, and it was one of the bigger mistakes in franchise history.
Martin Mayhew, the team’s boss before Bob Quinn, is heading to the Super Bowl with the San Francisco 49ers this weekend and he caught up with Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press to talk a little bit about that in addition to his past with the team.
Birkett brought up the decision to select Eric Ebron instead of Aaron Donald in the 2014 NFL Draft, and Mayhew didn’t hide from the fact that it was a mistake. Here’s a look at what he said about this in the piece:
“Everybody sort of whittles down, me being seven years I was there, into one draft pick,” Mayhew said. “Like, ‘Oh my God, he didn’t take Aaron Donald so he was awful.’ And that’s fair. Everybody has their own narrative and I can’t tell people how to judge the time that I was there.”
Mayhew declined to explain why he passed on Donald, a two-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year who’s on track to make the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
But through previous reporting, it’s known there was a big discrepancy between the grades Lions scouts and coaches gave Donald coming out of Pittsburgh.
An undersized interior defensive lineman at 6 feet 1 and 285 pounds, Donald did not fit the Lions’ profile for a defensive tackle. The Lions had success with big, physical interior linemen like Ndamukong Suh and Nick Fairley, both of whom were heading into their free-agent year, and given the disconnect between coaches and scouts, Mayhew made what appeared at the time to be the disciplined decision to pass.
Six years later, Mayhew acknowledges that was a mistake.
“I wish I would have taken Aaron Donald,” he said. “That’s no knock on Ebron. I wish I would have taken him. It’s not a decision that’s made in a vacuum. We talked about a lot of different scenarios, different situations. Man, I wish I had taken him.”
The Lions took Ebron and he had a failed tenure for the team. It’s something which plenty of fans have not been able to let go.
Eric Ebron Over Aaron Donald Remains Lions Mistake
Mention the decision to take Ebron and pass on Donald to a Lions fan and you’re likely to get a strong reaction, considering the career trajectory of the two. Ebron will be on his third NFL team this spring, while Donald has carved out a solid career with the Los Angeles Rams and remains a force up front. It hasn’t helped that the Lions have needed defensive linemen in a big way for the last handful of years.
Obviously, it’s easy to see Mayhew’s tenure perhaps ending differently if he had simply made the decision to select Donald over Ebron. Plenty of Lions fans will likely never let Mayhew forget the mistake he made with the move, even though hindsight is always 20-20.
At the very least, it’s good to see he understands the mistake he made.
Parallels Between 49ers and Lions
Though many Detroit fans likely won’t let bygones be bygones with several of the players, executives and coaches they used to have including Mayhew, it’s probably a good time to do just that in time for the Super Bowl. San Francisco offers Detroit hope that one day, the Lions could be in their shoes. Just a year ago, the 49ers were coming off a dreadful 4-12 season, picking high in the draft and looking like they were in trouble from the front office down. Now, they are being celebrated as one of the better up and coming franchises in football. It merely goes to show how quickly things can and do change in football with health, good drafting and savvy executive work.
The Lions have a long way to go before qualifying as such a team, but if San Francisco can put the pieces together and go worst to first, there’s no reason teams in a similar boat can’t put it together to do it too.
That’s something that plenty of others see. In order to do it, the Lions will have to avoid draft mistakes like the one they made with Ebron and Donald.