Detroit Lions continue to shake up coaching staff, front office; fire VP of football operations

We were warned.

Michael Lombardi of The Athletic warned that when the Detroit Lions decided not to continue with Jim Bob Cooter as the offensive coordinator that we should expect “a ton of changes.”

While the Lions haven’t dropped a huge bomb yet, they are clearly making some serious changes to their front office and coaching staff. Last week, it was offensive assistant Derius Swinton who was let go. This week, there have already been a couple more changes in the Lions’ administration.

According to Justin Rogers of The Detroit News, the Lions have parted ways with vice president of football operations Matt Harriss.

Harriss was one of Bob Quinn’s first hires as acting general manager, nabbing the salary cap expert from the Giants to help out with contractual issues and other things on the financial side of the business. Since that hire, the Lions have handed out significant contracts to Matthew Stafford (five-year, $135 million), Quandre Diggs (three-year extension, $18.6 million), Marvin Jones Jr. (five-year, $40 million), and Rick Wagner (five-year, $47.5 million) among others.

Additionally, the Lions have also let go of defensive quality control assistant Steven Williams, per the Detroit Free Press. This move comes as a lesser surprise, seeing as Williams was hired by Jim Caldwell in 2015. Because head coach Matt Patricia didn’t have a full offseason to build his coaching staff last year, it makes sense that he kept around some Caldwell holdovers. Now that Patricia can get a head start on building his staff in 2019, employees like Williams could be in danger.