The Detroit Lions cleaned house after a Week 8 loss that dropped the team to 1-7, but head coach Jim Caldwell survived the onslaught. While general manager Martin Mayhew and president Tom Lewand were both shown the door, Caldwell will remain in charge of the team after a Week 9 bye, but maybe not much longer than that.
Could Jim Caldwell still get the boot before 2015 ends?
The Lions would reportedly put defensive coordinator Teryl Austin in charge if Caldwell is fired before the 2015 season ends.
Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
One week earlier, the Lions fired Joe Lombardi as offensive coordinator along with offensive line coaches Jeremiah Washburn and Terry Heffernan in October, and appointed quarterbacks coach Jim Bob Cooter as the new offensive coordinator. What the firing really meant was that more responsibility was to be placed on the shoulders of Caldwell, but the immediate results weren't good.
In Cooter's first game as offensive coordinator, the Lions lost 45-10 to the Kansas City Chiefs and managed just 276 yards of offense. The blowout loss resulted in the firings of Mayhew and Lewand, but also raised questions as to how necessary it is to keep Caldwell in place.
Why keeping Caldwell makes sense
How did Caldwell survive the round of firings in the first place? According to ESPN’s Michael Rothstein, Caldwell is still in place because the team really doesn’t have many other options to run the offense if he’s fired.
After parting ways with three offensive assistants, firing Caldwell would likely heap a ton of offensive responsibility on Cooter, a 31-year-old coach who just became the team’s quarterbacks coach in 2014 and only other previous coaching experience was as an offensive assistant and quality control coach for three other teams.
Highly touted defensive coordinator Teryl Austin received head coaching interest during the 2015 offseason and would be the team’s choice as an interim coach if the Lions choose to part ways with Caldwell, according to Jason La Canfora of CBS Sports, so it’s not as though the team would be completely without leadership without Caldwell. However, the offense might be.
Also working in Caldwell’s favor is his relationship with owner Martha Ford who previously raved in the offseason about him being a “great guy” and “the most wonderful coach.”
Why parting ways with Caldwell makes sense
The amount of firings made over a two-week span suggests there’s an urgency to get things turned around now and that the team’s ownership isn’t content to wait until the offseason to make changes. So just keeping Caldwell as a placeholder to avoid more offensive discord doesn’t really fit the bill and continued struggles could mean more changes.
Detroit’s offense is trending in the wrong direction and has the third-fewest points scored in the NFL. In six of the team’s seven losses, the Lions scored fewer than 20 points. Even the team’s subpar offense in 2014 managed 20 or more points in nine games and was held under 20 just three times in 2013.
So if the offense is bad and getting worse, why avoid making a change due to the belief that the offense could be worse as a consequence? If the Lions are committed to making changes that produce results, keeping Caldwell in charge while the offense gets worse makes the firings after Weeks 7 and 8 moot.
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