New Detroit Lions OC Darrell Bevell spent year off preparing for new coaching job

One of the most common concerns I’ve seen from Detroit Lions fans regarding the team’s hiring of offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell is that the former Seahawks coach spent 2018 outside of football. After failing to land a job following his firing from Seattle—there were reports he was up for the Colts offensive coordinator job before Josh McDaniels backed out of Indy—Bevell went unemployed. Some worried that year off would make Bevell a little outdated and having to play catch up to today’s NFL.

But according this story from the Detroit Free Press, it appears Bevell spend some of his season away from the NFL trying to make sure he didn’t fall behind.

“Bevell spent some of his downtime this fall visiting friends in the coaching profession and watching practices, preparing for his next opportunity,” Freep’s Dave Birkett wrote.

Bevell was fired from the Seahawks after back-to-back years in which Seattle fell outside of the top 10 in scoring offense. Though he helped grow the offense to a four-year stretch in which they ranked in the top seven in DVOA—which included two Super Bowl appearances and one win—the former Wisconsin quarterback couldn’t keep the magic going in Seattle and was let go after seven years of coaching.

However, his time away has only made him more motivated, according to some of the people close to him.

“He’s so hungry, I know that much from being with him in Madison this fall, to get back in,” former Wisconsin colleague Dan McCarney told Birkett. “And I think he’ll even have even more of a deeper appreciation for the opportunity to coach again after being away from it for the season.”