DETROIT – The Detroit Lions have a bye this week. Mike O’Hara, long time beat writer for the Lions and now writing for DetroitLions.com and Michael Rosenberg, former Detroit Free Press writer who now writes for Sports Illustrated joined Devin Scillian and Bernie Smilovitz to talk about this remarkable week on Flashpoint Sunday.
"It did feel different," said Bernie. "It felt like something had been done and somebody really took charge."
Rosenberg talked about how this doesn’t feel like it’s just a personnel change this week, but that the Lions are changing the way they do business.
The panel discussed what is next for the Lions and the leadership of the owners.
"This might be a new owner," O’Hara said. "But she’s been in the business for 60 years. So this is not a new ownership group, they just happen to move up into these chairs."
Devin asks if new management is going to change the entire lineup of the team and O’Hara says that there usually is a trickle-down effect which could create an entirely new franchise.
Bernie brings up the issue of Matthew Stafford and whether he can be of use to the Lions.
"I do think Stafford can be saved," Rosenberg said. "The bottom line with the NFL, you’ve got your top five quarterbacks… then you’ve got that next group of guys and if they have the right system and the right talent around them and they’re utilized properly, you can win with them. If they don’t, it’s a disaster."
Are the Lions miles away from being a competitive football team or are they a season away? You can watch part one of this discussion in the video posted above and part two of this discussion in the video below.
In the final segment, Devin talks to Ambassador Dennis Ross, long-time diplomat and author of Doomed to Succeed, about the relationship between America and Israel.
Devin and Ross begin by talking about the leadership and assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, which was the first big international story Devin covered for Local 4.
The discussion moves to the politics in the Middle East and how the Arab Spring changed the region.
"We over-reacted to the Arab Spring," Ross said. "There was a vacuum that was created. You had authoritarian leaders who basically ruled their systems with an iron fist and an iron thumb. They kept any kind of separate instinct, any kind of separate out-pouring suppressed so suddenly when their gone and you have a kind of free-for-all, there’s no institutions."
The full conversation with Ross is posted below.