3) Jim Bob making waves.Lions offensive coordinator Jim Bob Cooter will likely be a name to watch as new staffs come together in January -- assuming Detroit coach Jim Caldwell's group isn't whacked by whoever gets hired to be the team's new GM -- and not just because his name is fun to say (which it is). The 31-year-old Cooter's made a marked difference with quarterback Matthew Stafford, and he's done it on the fly, having replaced the fired Joe Lombardi in late October. Through the first eight games of the year -- a span that includes the final seven games of Lombardi's tenure and the first of Cooter's -- Stafford threw 13 touchdown passes against 11 interceptions, with a discussion forming about his future in Detroit. Then the Lions had their Week 9 bye, the GM and president were shown the door, and Cooter quietly reworked the offense. The biggest change? According to players, his work to simplify the verbiage was most impactful. Tight end Eric Ebron explains it like this: "He's taking what was a paragraph long and condensing it to one word or two words." And in doing so, Cooter empowered his quarterback. "The reasoning for it is the ability to play on the ball," Stafford told me. "It lets you play faster. If you want to get into a play that, in the huddle, might be 10 or 15 words long, it might be difficult to do that at the line of scrimmage, barking all that out. So if you wanna play fast, it's easier if you can create on the move. ... Faster in and out of the huddle, and the ability to play at the line of scrimmage without huddling if you need to." That's allowed Stafford to create better matchups on his own -- and Cooter's doing that too, by moving guys around -- which has led to a surge in production at the skill spots. As for Stafford himself, over the last four games, his average yards and completion percentage are up, he's thrown nine touchdown passes and just a single pick, and his passer rating has jumped more than 20 points (from 84.1 over his first eight games to 105.4 over his last four). So now, rather than being viewed as a potential trade piece, Stafford is likely to be seen as an attractive building block to GM candidates. And for all the new head coaches that'll be in place in January, Cooter has the look of an offensive coordinator worth pursuing.