Jim Caldwell: Success in Detroit was impossible. Why? Where to go now?

It is widely recognized that the time of Detroit Lions Head Coach Jim Caldwell has passed. What went wrong? What does the team need now?

Detroit Lions Head Coach Jim Caldwell came to the Lions with an impressive enough resume. He went to the playoffs two out of three years with the Indianapolis Colts. He actually went to the Super Bowl in his rookie season. His final, brutal 2-win season there was easily blamed on the fact that his star quarterback, Peyton Manning, was lost for the entire year with a neck injury.

But what did the Lions really see in Caldwell?

The Detroit Lions had been looking for stability after the volatility and inconsistency of the Jim Schwartz coaching era. Schwartz inherited the NFL’s only winless team and succeeded in rekindling the fire and pride in the team that had been vanquished during the dark days of Matt Millen’s general managership era, but too much of the team at the time was built upon emotion.

In 2013, the Lions were in a very strong position with a record of 6-3 after the first game following their bye. Unfortunately, they then lost six of the final seven to fall out of playoff contention, necessitating a wholesale coaching change.

To be true, Schwartz brought needed intensity to the Lions but the unintended consequences of undisciplined play, mental errors, and untimely penalties cost the Lions too many games and Schwartz and his staff their jobs.

Martin Mayhew, the Lions general manager at the time sought to neutralize that unruly environment with a steady, experienced hand. He could not have found more of a diametric opposite personality from Schwartz than Jim Caldwell.

I was not a fan of Caldwell at the time, nor was I against his hiring. There was some to like, some not to like. I took more of a wait-and-see approach.

Then, on October 11th, 2015, an incident happened that cemented my perspective of Coach Caldwell.