Step down, Matt Millen
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Football guys like Matt Millen are wont to flex their big necks and tell you how the game teaches life skills you can't possibly understand from the stands – things like honor, duty and commitment. Like playing football is a mini-West Point.
That philosophy is more than a bit arrogant, but that's fine. That's football. And besides Matt Millen is a likeable guy, was a great player and has been an entertaining television broadcaster.
But if the Detroit Lions president wants anyone to believe he learned anything about values during his playing days, he ought to do the only honorable, team-first thing on the week he fired another of his coaching hires.
He should resign.
After five years of Millen running the worst franchise in the NFL deeper into the ground, the move would be long overdue.
The Lions stunk when Millen took over. They are worse now. The fact he will be hiring the third head coach under his tenure is just one of a million mind numbingly bad stats.
There should be no shame in failure for Millen. He was hired as an out-of-the-box idea for a franchise that has won just a single playoff game since 1957. The Lions have wallowed between bad and mediocre for so long that the hiring of a TV personality with no front office or business management experience seemed like a what-the-heck gamble. How much worse could it get, right?
Millen could always talk a good game, but in the Motor City, he has shown an aptitude for nothing else.
The Lions are a league-worst 20-55 since his hiring in 2001, worse even than the expansion Houston Texans and Cleveland Browns. Despite spending five first-round draft picks on offensive skill positions, the Lions are averaging just 15.8 points a game.
In head-scratching fashion, Millen chose wide receivers in the first round in each of the last three drafts. One of the receivers, Charles Rogers, was suspended for a month this year under the league's substance abuse policy.
Both of his two coaching hires – Marty Morningweg, who famously once chose to kick off after winning the coin toss in overtime, and Mariucci, who ran an offense that seemed allergic to throwing downfield – have been fired. The team has few stars, no clear course and more holes to fill than five years ago.
And yet Millen remains.
Why the Ford family gave him a five-year extension last summer remains a mystery in Detroit. It wasn't like Millen was a hot commodity. No other franchise would've been foolish enough to hire him. While much of that money wasn't guaranteed – meaning he could be bought out – there has been no indication that he's being sought by another team. The guy just isn't a good administrator and letting him hire another head coach just delays his inevitable doom.
Admitting failure is not easy, especially for a Super Bowl champion player like Millen. But to call his tenure in Detroit a catastrophe is unfair … to catastrophes.
The brooming of Mariucci, who seemed uncomfortable with the personnel Millen kept supplying him, is just the latest copout. It's not that Mooch had done much to deserve to stay – the Lions are 4-7 and looked hopeless in consecutive losses – but this is a mess that begins at the top.
When Millen was hired, his credentials were questioned. He may have been a terrific arm-chair GM on FOX broadcasts, but what, exactly, did he know about setting up a winning franchise?
His response was he played for Joe Paterno at Penn State and Bill Walsh in San Francisco and pretty much left it at that. He had football values, a no-nonsense attitude and a big work ethic. He rode a Harley. He was a tough guy.
The Ford family bought it. They are still buying it. No one else is, though.
So if Millen really wants to honor his mentors, honor the game he holds so dear and prove that tackle drills, wind sprints and adoring cheerleaders really do make football players better human beings, he ought to do what is right and step down now.
It doesn't make him a bad guy. It doesn't tarnish his great playing career. It doesn't make him a poor announcer.
It would just make him a respectable football man.
