Friday Notes: Matt Millen Round-Up

by Sean Yuille on Sep 26, 2008 1:31 AM EDT in Notes Comment 2 comments

New general manager Martin Mayhew doesn't plan on trading Roy Williams.
Steve Mariucci spoke out about the Matt Millen era and had some interesting things to say.

The team was 9-7 when Matt was hired, and he was hired to take the team really to the next level, so to speak, and in doing so, he dismantled that team, dismantled that coaching staff – some of the front office – and made an attempt to rebuild it.

And it’s been experiment after experiment trying to find the right combination – primarily of coaches. That’s been just a revolving door, as you know. There aren’t any players – not many – that have been there long-term. You have Jeff Backus, Dominic Raiola, but there are not many that have been there very long.
Mooch also said this about how Millen handled Joey Harrington once it was becoming obvious that things weren't going to work out with him.

[Millen] wanted to see if we could make [Harrington] into a legitimate starting quarterback -- a winning quarterback -- and I was willing to do that early. As time went on, you know, a young quarterback with a young team -- that's not a good recipe for success.

So, we weren't quite sure that he was going to be the guy, Rich. In fact, we suggested, you know, trading with somebody else for other veteran quarterbacks because we gradually believed that Joey would be better suited to be a backup for a while and watch somebody else do it.

So Matt wasn't willing to spend more money on the quarterback position. Matt insisted that we try to develop Joey and build up other parts of the team while we were trying to develop his skills, but it wasn't going to happen.
As more and more comes out it becomes all the more evident that while he meant well, Millen had no idea what he was doing.
The Free Press' Michael Rosenberg wrote an absolutely idiotic article about how he thinks the Lions should hire Joe Dumars -- yes, the Joe Dumars -- to be their new general manager. Seriously.
Drew Stanton talked about Matt Millen being fired and how he is progressing on his blog.
As Tom Kowalski points out, Rod Marinelli really has to try to make something out of this season. Most fans believe that the season is already over, and personally, I'm counting down the days until the offseason begins. The reason for that is because the offseason means a new GM (hopefully) will be hired and we can start to move on from the Millen era for good. For the players and coaches, they have to try their best as they will be auditioning for the new GM or for other teams. Every game does matter in that sense, win or lose.
Mark Schlereth, an ESPN analyst and one time teammate of Matt Millen, weighed in on how Millen did as a general manager and didn't sugarcoat anything.

Schlereth prefaced his comments by saying he personally likes Millen. "He's a guy that I respect," Schlereth said. "A guy that I love." And then Schlereth unloaded.

"It may be the worst personnel job in the history of the National Football League," Schlereth said. "He was horrible. Matt was -- I mean, it was absolute garbage."
I couldn't agree more.
The Free Press put together a photo gallery recapping the Matt Millen era. They also compiled quotes from the era and created a timeline on it.
The Detroit News compiled quotes from some former Lions and members of the media about Millen's firing.
Ryan Parker made a song called "Goodbye Matt Millen."
The American Mustache Institute is in mourning as not only was Matt Millen fired, but Todd Jones retired on Wednesday as well.
As of right now, the Lions have 9/4 odds of finishing with the league's worst record and having the #1 overall pick in next year's draft.

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president, not GM

The article mentioned that Dumars would be a good president, not GM…just wanted to make sure you got that right, yullie. And, hey, it’s crazy, and most likely would fail, but Joe D is a master at what he does….who knows

by dsheldon1977 on Sep 27, 2008 3:02 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs