I need to take a moment to preface these remarks. Pete Prisco from CBSSportsline.com might be a fantastic guy. He certainly gets a lot of stories and, while I don’t always agree with what he writes, he’s often good reading.

But his mock draft from earlier this week needs to be … well, it needs to be mocked. And the strange thing is, it needs to be mocked even though he ended up choosing as his top pick for Detroit the right guy – or at least the right position.

Prisco picked for the Lions Baylor offensive tackle Jason Smith. I thought that was good – with the free fall Alabama lineman Andre Smith has taken, I would like to see Detroit take Smith or Virginia tackle Eugene Monroe.

But Prisco then prefaced his pick with this statement: “… they should take Georgia quarterback Matthew Staffford. I just don’t think they will.” And he cited as a reason Joe Flacco from Baltimore and Matt Ryan from Atlanta.

Doh!!!

I wrote earlier this year that the Lions have been too hell bent on building with skill players. Wide receivers (Mike Williams, Charlie Rodgers, Roy Williams, et al) and quarterbacks (Joey Harrington, et al) rather than building with linemen on either side of the ball.

I stand by that. And I fully believe that the Lions should wait a year to take their next quarterback and focus this year on taking fat guys that can help the team run the ball and stop the run.

Building around quarterbacks just because Ryan and Flacco surprised in 2008 would be just another mistake. Ryan and Flacco succeeded because many of the other pieces were already in place in Atlanta and Baltimore. They also succeeded where many quarterbacks (Harrington, Ryan Leaf, Tim Couch, David Carr) have failed – because teams drafted franchise quarterbacks and ruined them by putting them in behind piss-poor offensive lines or on teams lacking the talent at skill positions that could help them make up for what has to be a ridiculously huge transition from playing in college to playing in the pros.

No, Mr. Prisco, the Lions should not take Matthew Stafford with the number one pick. And it’s not just because “draft experts” like Mel Kiper and Mike Mayock say Stafford is an unfinished product and possibly not a franchise quarterback.

They should not take Stafford because they don’t have the same infrastructure in place to support him like the Falcons (Michael Turner, Roddy White, Sam Baker, et al) had for Ryan or the Ravens (Jamal Lewis, Derrick Mason, Todd Heap, when not injured) had for Flacco.

Mr. Prisco, you managed to make the right pick in spite of yourself. But you should have stuck with it.