Lions Blog

Offensive line needs some help? No kid-ding

There's no question the Lions will be looking to add offensive linemen -- probably starting with a left tackle -- in next year's draft. On the current roster, Manny Ramirez is the youngest offensive lineman at 26, and with Jon Jansen replacing the inffective Ramirez-Daniel Loper tandem at left guard, three of the five starters up front are now 30 or older.

The only OL on the practice squad is center Dan Gerberry, with rookie seventh-round pick Lydon Murtha getting signed to the Miami Dolphins' 53-man roster last week. Murtha, a 6-foot-7, 315-pound tackle out of Nebraska, was a bit of a project, but the Dolphins thought enough of him to jettison a former fourth-round pick in Shawn Murphy to claim him.

"Seeing some of the other people we had running around out there, and seeing where they were, it led me to think that a tackle in the building would be a pretty good thing for us right now," said Miami coach Tony Sparano, a former offensive line coach. "Lydon is a guy we (looked at) in the draft, spent a good time with, and had a good background on."

The Lions did, too, obviously. And they invested an entire offseason in him as well, though Murtha was slowed by injuries -- staying healthy was a problem he had in college, too.

"It's football," offensive line coach George Yarno said of losing Murtha. "It's something you deal with and you move forward. He was becoming part of the group and he was fun to be around. He was maturing and growing and getting better. I would've loved to keep working with him, but that's the way it goes.

"You never know what's gonna happen. Teams get injuries and things change and that's just something where, if it happens, it happens, and you work with the guy as long as you can."