Wally is a survivor. All those victories over the years are no accident. He wants to win. He knows how to win. Sometimes he has given in to some weaknesses, like staying with the wrong player too long, or not letting the better player off the bench. Or staying with a system that was once state of the art, but got somewhat outdated, and out-innovated, and behind the times. But he eventually made the necessary changes. And lo and behold, it certainly looks like his Xs and Os guys were capable of much more productivity on the field than we had been seeing.
Off the top of my head, some good changes that were made ...
Acquiring Arland Bruce. Fortuitous, but still a solid judgment. In the right environment. It certainly helps having Hall of Fame Geroy Simon here as a pace setter.
Acquiring Tad Kornegay. Also fortuitous. But also solid judgment.
Acquiring Khreem Smith.
Getting Khalif Mitchell into the game.
Moving Aaron Hunt back into the middle.
Dumping the 3-4.
Moving Banks back to DB. Moving Phillips to corner. Bringing in Jerome Dennis.
Giving Cauchy Muamba time at safety.
Getting Solomon Elimimian into the middle of a 4-3.
Turning the athletic instincts of the blitzers loose.
Turning Benevides loose to call an aggressive attack oriented defence.
Getting Jacques to open up the playbook. Making the opposing defence unsure of what is coming. Keeping the defence off balance.
Staying patient with Travis Lulay. Showing him full confidence.
Establishing a much stronger running game presence. Giving Andrew Harris the opportunity to run the ball.
Going with Akeem Foster. Going with Sean Gore. More reps last year would have helped Gore in particular to start this year. Going with Marco Iannuzzi much earlier than has happened for almost all NI rookies.
Getting the pass protection schemes to function. Protecting the health of our QB. Giving our QB time to make plays. Some credit to Kelly Bates and Dan Doroazio. Some credit to the personnel decision to pay for Ben Archibald. Some credit to Jacques for changing the schemes, game plans, and play calling.
Pushing the right buttons, or just leaving him alone ... whatever it has taken to get Paul McCallum to be the Hall of Fame kicker he has become under Wally's watch.
Personnel
Schemes
O and D
At this time, I would have to say Wally has as much or more going for his coaching style as he has ever had.
I believe he had to make changes to get there this year, after 8 and 10, 8 and 10, and the horrid start to this year, but he has certainly done that.
Advantage Hufnagel and Trestman no longer. The league and Wally in particular have caught up. Surpassed? Can't go quite that far yet. Personnel-wise Yes. Schemes-wise at least equal.
The Lions are playing about as fun a game right now as I have ever seen.
Who'd have thunk that five or six weeks ago. 
