Detroit Lions Select...

I had intended to post the Detroit Lions "alternate" first overall pick prior to the draft, but have been busy at my real job, and have not had the time to post. Suffice to say, The Fantasy Men do NOT like the Matthew Stafford selection, for which a bit of a background may be in order.
There was a great article posted on Football Outsiders, I believe it was last week, talking about the "draft" (quotation marks for a reason) and its correlation to team success. A central, albeit underdeveloped tenet, of the article was that the actual draft itself is a very small part of what is generally considered to be a successful, or failed, draft.
As important, and perhaps MORE important, is the development that comes AFTER the draft. Take two players of equal talent, put them in vastly different scenarios, and the output will be vastly different. Only the very special player can rise above organizational malaise, and I haven't seen anything to lead me to believe that Matthew Stafford is that player. Simply put, I don't know (nor obviously does anyone) whether Matthew Stafford will be a great NFL player, an average player, or a complete washout. However, I DO know that the Lions do not yet have a system and the tools in place to allow him to grow to his full potential.
To that end, were the Lions to come to the light, and hire The Fantasy Men as co-GMs (or me as GM, and Steve as my coffee guy), our draft board top 5 would look like this;

1) Eugene Monroe
2) Jason Smith
3) B.J Raji
4) Aaron Curry
5) Michael Oher

I am NOT saying that these are the best 5 players in the draft, but these players, I think, provide the largest marginal return to a rebuilding Lions program. Look, no matter what the Lions do, they are not going to contend for a Super Bowl at any point in the next two years, which is both a bad thing and an opportunity, since it allows the Lions to totally clean house, and restock their cupboard for the future. I worry that picking Matthew Stafford #1 here will lead to a spiraling problem in future years, where the organization feels the need to get him "weapons", a la the Indianapolis Colts, and ignore more pressing needs. The presence of three offensive tackles in our top 5 also allows us to use some small bit of leverage in the pre-draft negotiations. The contract handed over to Matthew Stafford will probably never be justified from the Lions end, since they are paying something like $9-13mm real value every year, for a QB that alone will not be able to fix their woes.
The Lions had a real chance to begin the long turnaround process this weekend, and I am afraid they chose poorly...