Martz: Lions spent too much time dealing with "periphery"

The New York Times has a nice overview story on the Lions and the changes from last year's horror.

The part I found interesting is this comment from former Lions Offensive Coordinator Mike Martz, now an NFL Network analyst:

“The meat of that organization, of any organization to me, is inside, and that’s been lacking over the years,” said Martz. “There’s just too much time spent on the periphery.”

I've been among the contingent who puts most of the Lions' recent failure on the inability to effectively put together the offensive and defensive lines. And it's interesting, to me anyway, that Martz -- a guy who's perceived as being all about flash and developing high-powered offenses with players others might discard, the Kurt Warners and Mike Furreys of the world -- sees the core Lions problem as fundamentally the same thing.

Talk about it in The Den!

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