As of the year 2018, the Lions will join the list of teams looking for a new head coach. Monday morning, the team announced that they have fired head coach Jim Caldwell after four seasons with the franchise, less than a year after he signed an extension. Since the season ended, the Raiders have parted ways with Jack Del Rio, the Bears with John Fox, the Colts with Chuck Pagano, and many more expected to come in the recent weeks. John Elway will decide in the next few days if he will retain head coach Joseph Vance or not. Bruce Arians was reported to be stepping down at the end of the season, although he said he has “no plans of doing so”. Marvin Lewis, in the final year of his contract, is not expected to be retained. The Giants are still looking for their head coach of the future after firing Ben Mcadoo mid-season. There is going to be a lot of competition to find the next leader of the locker room. The question now becomes how many viable candidates are currently on the market that can offer improvement?

As for Caldwell and the Lions, every Detroit fan and podcast had concluded that the time the coach had with the organization had run its course. In no way, however, was Caldwell a “bad” coach for the team during his tenure. Caldwell, who was 36-28 overall with Detroit, had a winning percentage of .562 as Lions head coach, which was the highest of any permanent coach of the franchise for more than one season since Buddy Parker had a 47-23-2 record and .671 winning percentage from 1951-to-1956 [ESPN]. Caldwell actually had a better winning percentage in his four years in Detroit than he did during his three years in Indianapolis, when he went 26-22 and made one Super Bowl. However, after a disappointing 2017 campaign which resulted in the team missing the playoffs for the second time in three years, it was clear the time had come to move on. I truly think the Bengals loss in week 16 cemented his fate, however the Lions would still most likely miss the playoffs due to the head-to-head loss with Atlanta. Jim Caldwell was what this organization needed at the time, an even-keel coach to change the culture of the locker room and develop Matthew Stafford as a quarterback. The Lions had no arrests or suspensions in the three most recent Caldwell years, and gone are the days of Matthew Staffords foolish rookie errors. As even keeled as he is during the late fourth quarter comebacks, his teams often appeared to come out with that same calm energy, looking flat and unmotivated in the beginning of games and often putting the Lions in holes that they couldn’t always dig themselves out.

The most obvious candidates for the position would be the Patriots’ coordinators Matt Patricia and Josh McDaniels. It is also reported they will interview Carolina’s Defensive Coordinator Steve Wilks and Texans defensive coordinator Mike Vrabel. McDaniels would be the best option to focus on getting the most out of Stafford and Jim Bob Cooter, who the team is expected to retain as their offensive coordinator. However, Detroit ranked in the bottom of the league in run defense, and their front 7 might arguably be one of the worst in football. Bob Quinn, the teams’ general manager, sacrificed bolstering the defensive line to fix the offensive line last offseason and drafted for the linebacker position, which was a glaring need and a priority. It will be up to Quinn to add talent to one of the worst defenses in the league to help a promising secondary. This is why Martha Ford and company might decide to hire a defensive head coach and give Cooter control of the offense. Either way, the Lions should face competition in their hunt for a new head coach, despite being one of the more premier destinations for a new head coach.