Sharp: NFL must try to save Lions from themselves

Perhaps Gov. Snyder can appoint an emergency manager for the Detroit Lions. If anybody can make a valid case for intellectual bankruptcy, it's this hapless crew.

The NFL must get involved. It cannot force the Ford family to sell the franchise on the basis of chronic incompetence, but it can strongly encourage helping the Lions with their organizational structure. The NFL can offer Martha Ford the same assistance in identifying quality personnel people as it did with her late husband -- counsel that William Clay Ford Sr. stubbornly declined after Matt Millen was fired in 2008.

It's important that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell make Mrs. Ford understand that the only way -- repeat, the only way -- the Lions can become a winning team is bringing in a league-approved administrator to oversee the radical organizational changes likely coming.

Perhaps Goodell could convince Hall of Fame chief executive Bill Polian to leave ESPN and temporarily "assign" him to the Lions for the next six months. He could be given the power -- with Mrs. Ford's blessing -- to inspect and evaluate every aspect of the football operation and then make the difficult, unpopular decisions that this organization has been too afraid to make for decades.

The hardest decision right now is everyone acknowledging that the Lions must be looked at as an expansion franchise.

It's an unsettling admission, but it's necessary.

The "expansion" Lions would have an advantage over a new franchise in that they have assets that could translate into the strongest currency available to them: draft picks.

The trade deadline is Tuesday. The Lions should sell. There are only two players who realistically could garner a second-round draft pick -- maybe even a first-rounder, if the Lions find a desperate trading partner -- receiver Golden Tate and defensive end Ziggy Ansah.

Tate is 27 years old with a reasonable salary cap hit of $3.1 million this season. It jumps to $7.1 million in 2016 and $8 million in 2017. Ansah has one year remaining on his rookie contract, making him attractive to potential suitors.

And while the Lions are guilty of grossly overvaluing their talent, that shouldn't preclude Mrs. Ford from demanding that general manager Martin Mayhew basically validate his own failures by accumulating as many 2016 draft picks as possible, setting up his inevitable successor with the tools to build a legitimate football team.

Nobody's more embarrassed by the Lions' sustained futility than the NFL. In a league of mandated parity via a hard salary cap, the Lions remain the oldest contradiction of this foolproof policy. The NFL can't be happy about a recent Forbes magazine story that used the Lions as an example of how NOT to run a business.

Goodell met with Mrs. Ford during the Lions' London visit. He called her "a terrific owner," who is involved in league matters. Goodell wouldn't divulge specifics of their conversation. But if Goodell's not -- at the very least -- planting the seed in ownership's mind that the Lions must take a new approach, the commissioner is not living up to his self-professed role of protecting the integrity of the NFL shield.

Obviously, the Lions need help. More than 50 years of screw-ups don't lie. The biggest help the NFL could provide is saving the Lions from themselves.

Contact Drew Sharp: dsharp@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @drewsharp. Tune in to "Dery and Sharp" from 3-7 p.m. weekdays on Detroit Sports 105.1.