When C.C. Brown was very quietly signed by the Detroit Lions during the 2010 offseason, I spent the rest of that offseason making snide remarks about him eventually getting cut.
Well, okay then. I stand corrected. Brown not only played in 15 games this season, starting eight of them, but he played at the level of a serviceable football player.
This, of course, brings us to our next issue. After a relatively productive season, Brown is poised to enter free agency, a mere year after being allowed to walk by the New York Giants and signed by the Lions.
The question now is, has Brown done enough to warrant a re-up with the Lions? And with so much young talent seemingly on the rise in Detroit, does Brown even want to come back to a team where he might be obsolete in a couple years?
2010 Performance
As mentioned before, Brown was a pretty decent safety in 2010. But his game is not exactly devoid of any and all weakness.
In 15 games this season, Brown had zero interceptions and four successfully defended passes. A ball-hawking safety, he is not.
There were more than a few instances of him taking the wrong angle on a play, or simply giving up a completion instead of trying to make a play on the ball. Of course, he was rarely in position to make a play on the ball in the first place.
Did he get burned deep? Yes, but not as often as you might expect for a guy who became known as "Can't Cover" Brown in New York. Brown mostly kept the play in front of him, and he remains a great hitter and solid tackler.
Of course, he kept the play in front of him to a fault sometimes. It almost seemed as though he went out of his way to cushion every man assignment he had, just so he wouldn't get burned deep. In other words, in the old saying "take what the defense gives you," Brown was "what the defense gives you" on most plays.
That is, unless the offense wanted to run the ball. Then Brown was a force, perhaps the surest tackler in the secondary, aside from perhaps Louis Delmas.
Team Interest
Perhaps the surest way to gauge the direction the Lions are going is to look at the latter half of the 2010 season. You may remember that as the half of the season in which converted rookie cornerback Amari Spievey started most of his games in Brown's spot.
And it's not just Spievey. Randy Phillips, another rookie safety, played meaningful minutes towards the end of the season and appears to be in line for an expanded role next season. John Wendling, an athletic freak who played all 16 games as a star special teamer, also held his own in limited defensive work.
So the Lions have a young safety corps, all of whom seem to be up-and-coming.
Brown turned 28 today (happy birthday, C.C.!), so he should theoretically be entering his prime. Yet he's the same player he's ever been: a run-stopping linebacker in the body of a 208-pound safety.
For the Lions, who desperately need better coverage players throughout the back seven, Brown doesn't appear to make much sense for the future.
Player Interest
For a sixth-year player who lost playing time to a pair of rookies, Brown shouldn't be too terribly demanding during this offseason.
That being said, he's far from being irrelevant. While Brown would be a great starting safety if he had coverage skills, teams always find a way to use guys under 30 who can hit.
Since Brown's last two contracts were one-year deals issued after his four-year rookie contract expired with the Houston Texans, Brown would probably be ecstatic to haul in a two or three-year deal.
I don't know what the odds of that happening are, but I know they're slim with Detroit. The Lions have a solid foundation of youth in place, all of which play at Brown's level or better and with more upside. Why would they want to lock Brown into a long-term deal when he figures to be the team's last-string player if the rookies develop like they should?
Now, that's assuming anybody actually offers Brown a multi-year deal. If it comes down to Brown looking for work wherever he can get it, then it might be worth it to him to try returning to Detroit for another year, where he's a known quantity and working in a defense he understands.
Miscellaneous Factors
I know I said this once before, but there's always a chance that the team that eventually signs Brown is done with him by the end of training camp.
This is particularly likely on a team that has a lot of young players with upside at Brown's position. If just a couple of those young players have strong showings at camp, Brown, who would basically be the steady veteran option, becomes expendable.
Detroit is very much one of those teams, and Brown knows it. He should be aware that signing in Detroit, or with a team that drafted a safety in, say, the fourth round or so, is a gamble for him, especially if he has any interest in starting.
Of course, it might not matter soon whether Brown has interest in starting or not, but rather whether he has any interest in being on an NFL roster at all.
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