Saturday, January 28, 2006

So Long as Ford is Owner, Millen Remains Best Option for the Detroit Lions.

Another issue, involving the Detroit Lions organization, which has occupied my thoughts since the firing of Mariucci as head coach, is the media and fan bombardment of President/GM Matt Millen. It may not be very popular around Detroit, especially from a fan’s point-of-view, to say that Millen is a good thing for Detroit Lions’ football. But, from my perspective, it has been a very good thing for Detroit Lions’ football. Bare with me here.

My long-standing, deep-seeded disgust for Willie Ford has endured for the last 25 years. Always we were saddled with GMs that were all about the bottom-line and less about the on-field product. Sure, we regularly fielded middle-of-the-pack teams that either barely made or barely missed the playoffs. But we never fielded a team that furthered the belief that we would make it over the hump and get into the Super Bowl. Whether or not Willie Ford ever verbalized it, this was obviously perfectly fine with ownership because it meant that they could still turn a profit without ever having to pay for that extra player or players to put the team over the top. Well, age must have caught up with Willie, because he finally decided to hire someone with a higher degree of football acumen then business sense to run his operation, Matt Millen.

In spite all of Millen’s early failings and his abysmal record; I am not yet ready to give up on Millen. In fact, I still hold on to the belief that having Millen run the show is still much more preferable to the alternative. Millen may still be learning on the job, but his actions are clearly more purposeful to me than any of his predecessors. In addition, he continues to seek out advice and guidance from top football people to better his grasp of running a football team. Sure, many unintelligent writers and fans would see this as a sign of weakness, but this is really the actions of a man committed to his task and a man who is unafraid to expose his deficiencies to the media because he is more worried about getting the job done than preserving his reputation. We are, after all, talking about a man with (was it four or five) Super Bowl rings, which established himself as a leader during his playing days with a fiery intensity and will to win. And, on top of those personal qualities, Millen has finally learned (albeit after five years) that his best chance at success is to develop and instill his football philosophy into this team. Smashmouth football built on a stingy defense and a power run game coupled with play-action-passing downfield. With the hire of Marinelli, and the potential signing of Donnie Henderson as defensive-coordinator, Millen has potentially made good on his ability to develop the right kind of Lions team, in his image and in the image of the hard-working and tough-minded people of Detroit. So, for as long as Willie Ford continues to own and operate the Lions, I will continue to be excited about Matt Millen running this team, instead of someone like…say Chuck Schmidt?