Caldwell facing long odds
The pitchforks are out, and that should come as no surprise to anyone who has watched the Detroit Lions this season.
When Bob Quinn made the dubious decision to keep Jim Caldwell as the Lions coach in January, the assumption was that Caldwell was being given a proveit year to show he was the right man for the job.
Four games into what looks like another disappointing season, that doesn’t appear to be the case.
The Lions have played three pretty bad teams — the Indianapolis Colts, Tennessee Titans and Chicago Bears are all 1-3 — and they haven’t looked good doing so.
They’ve committed too many penalties. They’ve dropped too many passes. They have one measly takeaway. And they’ve yet to string together four good quarters of football.
Caldwell alone isn’t at fault for the Lions’ issues. The roster has personnel problems on both sides of the ball, and the players are making the bone-headed mistakes on the field.
But as he said after a Week 2 loss to the Titans and again after Sunday’s no-show against the Bears, the responsibility for the Lions’ struggles falls on him.
“I am a guy that believes in results,” Caldwell said Monday. “Results aren’t good, plain and simple. But I’m not one to make any excuses and try to hide from facts. I’m more interested in whether or not we’re winning or losing. We’ve been losing of late and that’s not good. And that’s my responsibility.”
Caldwell said Monday that he and Quinn meet every day to discuss the state of the team, but he declined to say if his job security has been a part of their discussions lately.
As for fans who seem fed up with Caldwell’s coaching staff and stoic sideline demeanor and are ready to punch out on a second consecutive season before Columbus Day, Caldwell was unmoved by that as well.
“That’s something I can’t control in that regard,” he said. “All I can do is tell you that the same group of men knows how to get things turned around the right way. We have our players that are good enough players to get it done and we’ve just got to do a better job.”
There’s still an avenue for Caldwell to return as coach in 2017.
If the Lions make the playoffs, for instance, Quinn might have no choice but to bring Caldwell back for a fourth year.
But that looks like a long shot, and it won’t happen unless the Lions make dramatic improvements to the way they’ve played.
“I know we need to get better in a whole lot of areas, that’s for sure,” Caldwell said. “We’ve got to make certain that we get our guys in position to play a little bit better than we’ve been playing because we’ve been so inconsistent. Haven’t run the ball as well as we’d like the last couple games and certainly haven’t stopped the run as well as we’d like.”
Four games hardly make a season, especially when three of them are on the road and your two best defensive players are hurt, but the Lions are in dire straits entering Sunday’s game against old coach Jim Schwartz — the man Caldwell replaced in Detroit — and the Philadelphia Eagles.
If the Lions don’t start their turnaround now, in the first game of a three-game homestand, they risk seeing their season run off the rails.
Caldwell said he’s confident better days are ahead but offered no real insight Monday on how he intends to make that happen.
“I’m not in doubt about that, it’s just a matter of how quickly,” Caldwell said. “That’s the key. We need to get it done now. That’s what we’ve got to keep fighting for.”
Birkett writes for the Detroit Free Press, part of the USA TODAY Network.