The Lions general manager hails from the best organization in the NFL, and he wasn’t interested in 9-7 seasons any more. A look at the factors that led to his biggest decision as a GM yet.
ALLEN PARK — Bob Quinn hails from the New England Patriots, a place of division titles and playoff runs, of Super Bowls and dynasties. His hire as Detroit Lions general manager in 2016 represented a reach toward a higher standard, one the Lions haven’t experienced in many fans’ lifetimes.
Quinn made the biggest decision of his Lions tenure Monday when he fired head coach Jim Caldwell. When it came down to it, the Lions’ winningest coach in the Super Bowl era wasn’t nearly good enough.
And Quinn wants to make that clear.
“We didn’t beat the really good teams,” Quinn said after the very first question of Monday’s press conference. “Our record was above average. We’re 9-7 the last two years, but our record against the better teams in the league has not been that good.”
The Lions have beaten one playoff team in the two seasons since Quinn arrived. That was the 14-7 win over the Minnesota Vikings in Week 4 this season. It was an impressive road victory over a future division champion, but it was also aided by a Dalvin Cook injury on a play where he fumbled to set up a Lions touchdown.
Since last season started, the Lions are 1-12 against teams that made the playoffs and 17-3 against teams that missed. It’s a jarring number for a 41-year-old general manager whose 16 years in New England featured 13 division titles, 22 playoff wins and four Super Bowl victories.
Quinn said he reached the conclusion to move on from Caldwell on Sunday night, after the season concluded with Detroit’s 35-11 win over a hobbled Green Bay team to finish 9-7. He’d thought about it plenty before then, to the point of compiling hours of background work on candidates around the league. That’s how, within hours of the coaching change, the Lions had reportedly requested interviews with five coaches from other NFL teams.
Certain moments stuck with him, ones where the Lions didn’t appear like a playoff team. He found disappointment in games such as the blowout loss to the Ravens and dropping a game to the lowly Bengals while needing a win to stay in playoff contention.
He saw an offensive line he pumped high draft picks, large amounts of salary cap and trade assets into struggle to run the ball or protect the quarterback. He acknowledged that injuries played a part, but his first move upon firing Caldwell was to inform offensive line coach Ron Prince that he was no longer under contract either.
He said he wears the 9-7 records from the past two seasons as his own mark. He wished he’d added more players on defense to guard against injuries. But he also said the roster he compiled was better than to finish one game above.500 each time.
The conclusion he came to was to fire a coach who went 36-28 with two playoff appearances in four years. That’s a coach who came to a team mired in discipline issues, a franchise that had reached the postseason once in 13 years prior and took it to the point where 9-7 was a disappointment.
It was a solid run that left Quinn and many on the outside with a feeling of emptiness in the end. Even Caldwell had a hard time summarizing what it meant Sunday night.
“I just think there’s some things that got done,” Caldwell said.
Quinn’s expectations are higher than the product he’s seen. He has a franchise quarterback in Matthew Stafford with skill players he trusts, and he created a window of contention by signing that quarterback to the richest contract in NFL history last summer. He wants to sell those factors to coaches of a passing league in hopes of finding one who can break beyond the threshold of wildcard playoff appearances and first-round exits.
He knows he’ll have to beat out other openings, to appear more stable and attractive than the next team looking for a head coach. He needs to find a coach better than the moderately successful one he fired.
He knows the risk at play. It’s the only way of NFL life he knew before he arrived.
Now, he wants it to be a part of Detroit’s culture, too.
“There’s risk in everything I do,” Quinn said. “Every day.”
