Mayhew Says Lions Hunted In Draft For Guys With 'Great Character And An Edge'
By Ashley Dunkak
@AshleyDunkak
CBS DETROIT - As the 2015 NFL Draft unfolded, several talented players slipped because of character issues. The Detroit Lions steered clear of such prospects, which included cornerback Marcus Peters, defensive ends Randy Gregory and Shane Ray, and offensive tackle La'El Collins.
Peters was kicked off his college team for insubordinate behavior. Gregory failed a drug test at the NFL combine. Ray was cited for marijuana possession a few days before the draft. Collins, in the most serious instance, was wanted for questioning in the shooting death of his pregnant ex-girlfriend, though police have said Collins is not a suspect.
Peters was taken before the Lions picked, going 18th overall to the Kansas City Chiefs. The Denver Broncos took Ray with the 23rd overall pick, in the slot where Detroit was originally slated to pick before the Lions traded down to 28th. Gregory dropped to the bottom of the second round, going 60th overall to the Dallas Cowboys. Collins went undrafted.
Meanwhile, Detroit compiled what appears to be another smart, high-character class - complete with players from Duke and Stanford - and Mayhew explained why when he reviewed the draft Saturday.
"You can have great character and you can have an edge," Mayhew said. "That's what I want. I want a great character guy that has an edge to him as well. There are a lot of players in this league that have great reputations and are great in the community and do great things, but they're excellent players and they have an edge to them, they have a very competitive nature about them, and so I want those guys."
Mayhew also wants players on whom the team can depend even when rough stretches hit.
"When you have guys that with the right sort of moral fiber, when the going gets tough, then they're ready to step up and they're not going back down, they're not going to go into their own individual sort of thing," Mayhew said. "They understand it's a team. We have to try to accomplish something together. I think that works better when you have guys with solid character."
The team's assistant coaches are heavily involved in the draft process in part to help discover whether players have that character. Mayhew said he takes the input of coaches seriously in deciding whether to draft a player because the coaches will be the ones working closely with him.
"We want to be around a group of guys that enjoy being together, and I've been here when it hasn't been that way," Mayhew said.
If a coach does not like a player, Mayhew said, the Lions will not bring him in.
"They're going to be locked in a room with those guys for eight, nine, 10 hours a day," Mayhew said. "They're going to have to work with those guys every single day, so I want them to have guys that they want to have. I tell those guys before the draft, 'Hey, I'm not going to draft a guy who you don't want to coach.' So we get on the board, we have names on the board, I ask them, 'Do you want to coach this guy?' And coaches have said no, and we draft somebody else.
"I think it's important to have a relationship where the coach is as vested in that player as I am and as our scouts are, that he wants that guy to be successful as much as our scouts want the guy to be successful," Mayhew added.
Mayhew said the week before the draft that he has been more cautious about taking players with character concerns after the 2011 class that included Nick Fairley, Mikel Leshoure and Titus Young, all of whom had red flags in their backgrounds before the Lions selected them.
Mayhew indicated Saturday that Detroit is not the only team that is more hesitant now to take a chance on a player with a history of misbehavior. No team wants to be embarrassed, and with scrutiny on players at an all-time high, the odds are good that someone who makes bad decisions will get caught.
"In this day and age, with the camera phones and all the media access and Twitter and all those things that we have, I think it's much more of an issue than it was 10, 12 years ago," Mayhew said. "I can tell you for a fact people did things in the NFL, players did things that never saw the light of day, and now every time somebody does something it's all over the Internet and social media. I think that's an important factor that's changed the nature of this game and college football as well."
