It’s safe to say Lions fans are very grateful now to have Dan Campbell as their head coach. The man behind the “biting kneecaps” has led Detroit to back-to-back NFC North titles and a 15-win season in 2024. This comes on the heels of one of the worst stretches the team underwent during their three years with Matt Patricia running the show.
In fact, the Lions have gone through a number of rough stints of head coaches this century. Not one, not two but three Lions head coaches made a recent list over at CBS ranking the top 25 worst NFL coaching hires this century.
Patricia came in at No. 9 on this list. He coached from 2018-2020, taking over for Jim Caldwell. After a 6-10 rookie season, Patricia dropped to 3-12-1 in his second season. After the team came out and said Patricia will return for a third season, he went 4-7 in 2020 before being shown the door. Patricia finished with a record of 13-29-1.
Another wizard under Bill Belichick who struggled mightily to replicate the Patriots aura elsewhere, Patricia inherited a reasonably competitive Lions roster from under the watch of Jim Caldwell, only to oversee a perceived breakdown in the very culture of the organization, with big-name veterans like future Super Bowl champion Darius Slay clashing with his personality.
Patricia landed just above Rod Marinelli, who came in at No. 10. Marinelli came to Detroit in 2006 after ten years in Tampa Bay. Marinelli went 3-13 in his first but improved to 7-9 in 2007. Then 2008 happened. The Lions became the first team in NFL history to go 0-16 in the regular season, a feat since accomplished by the 2017 Cleveland Browns.
Anytime you literally go winless, there’s plenty of blame to go around, and Detroit faithful surely pin much of it on former president and CEO Matt Millen, who oversaw the construction of the long-lowly Lions. Marinelli was the man on the sidelines, though, and not even his specialty — defense — looked even remotely special as Motown endured one blowout after another.
As bad as those era were for the Lions, they were not ranked as the worst Lions hire this century. That dubious distinction belongs to Marty Mornhinweg, at No. 7.
Mornhinweg coached the Lions in 2001 and 2002 after spending four years as offensive coordinator for the 49ers. He won five games in two seasons, going 2-14 in 2001 and 3-13 in 2002. Mornhinweg is a strong example of a coach that was better suited as an assistant and coordinator than a head coach. He would go on to coach in some capacity until 2020, including being the offensive coordinator for three more teams (Eagles, Jets, Ravens).
Marty was a trusted offensive voice for icons like Andy Reid, Mike Holmgren and Steve Mariucci, but some of those roles may have been refined thanks to the embarrassment of his time in Detroit. The Lions are ultra-aggressive under Dan Campbell these days, which is a stark contrast to the time Mornhinweg literally opted to kick the ball to his opponent in sudden-death overtime in 2002.
The No. 1 hire on this list, almost completely to be expected, was the disaster that was Urban Meyer with the Jacksonville Jaguars. The entire stint, which lasted all of 13 games, including Meyer’s viral video of him flirting with a woman following a loss. Meyer went 2-11 before the Jags closed his tab, one of the shortest coaching stints in NFL history.
The list did also mention Bill Belichick’s one day as head coach of the New York Jets in 2000 as 1B with an asterisk, since he never coached a game. But he was announced as the new head coach and was set to have his introductory press conference before writing his resignation letter on a napkin and later joining the New England Patriots. The rest, as they say, is history.
This article originally appeared on Lions Wire: 3 Detroit Lions regimes land in the bottom 10 of coaching hires this century
Reporting by Billy Riccette, Lions Wire / Lions Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
