Where's The Haggling? Martz And Lions Are Just Gonna Stay Friends

In the end, neither of them must have wanted the other badly enough.

Mike Martz is not the new offensive coordinator for the Detroit Lions. He will not pass GO, he will not collect $200. Or, in this case, $1.5 million per season for three seasons.

Martz, the deposed St. Louis Rams coach and a guy who likes to do crazy things like pass the ball downfield every so often and rack up some points on the scoreboard, wanted $4.5 million over a three-year agreement, published reports say. Nothing less. The Lions, according to those same reports, offered $3 million over the same time frame. Nothing more.


"Yeah, I'll take the job, but not the dough you're offering"


So now at home in Florida Martz sits, apparently content with sitting out the 2006 season if need be. Just like that. I want this. You're offering that. End of discussion. Good luck to you and good day, sir.

Where was the negotiating? Where was the give and take? Where were the performance incentives, those wonderfully handy clauses that can be used as tools to bring two sides closer together? Athletes get them all the time -- why not coaches?

The "Thanks but no thanks" that Mike Martz gave the Lions also creates a slightly awkward moment for new Lions head coach Rod Marinelli. Marinelli spoke glowingly of Martz earlier in the week, after having interviewed him, and let his enthusiasm get the best of him when he spoke to the media Wednesday.

"We're very close," Marinelli said of Martz's hiring, which was supposedly impending. Of course, with the Lions, the only thing that is ever impending is doom.

In his address to reporters Wednesday, Marinelli said things that caused stories to be written in real newspaper ink -- not those glowing CRTs that Internet folks use -- indicating that Martz was aboard. All that needed to be done, we were led to believe, was having those pesky t's crossed and those annoying i's dotted.

Well, not only were they not crossed and dotted, they were erased, obliterated from the page, and now Marinelli is scrambling. He says he has a Plan B. He says he's in no hurry. Both are things you say when you don't have a Plan B, and you are in a hurry.

But this whole Martz mess -- he's another "MM" man so maybe this is for the best -- smells a bit like seafood to me. I can't figure out whether the Lions didn't value Martz all that much to pony up the extra dough, or if Martz wasn't jazzed enough about adding Honolulu Blue to his wardrobe that he was willing to walk away over $500 K a year, which was supposedly a "hard number", according to Martz about his agent's feelings. Either way, something must be off-putting about Martz to the Lions, and vice versa, or else I have to think MM III would be the new OC. After all, nary another name has been mentioned. Or even leaked. Maybe Rod Marinelli's Plan B is further down in the alphabet.

I know my colleague Kevin Antcliff feels the Lions are the bad guys in this deal. That may be so, in the sense of not willing to pay a bit more to snag Martz. But it says here that Martz, or at least his agent, is culpable too. If Martz truly wanted the Lions job, and if the Lions wanted Martz, both sides could have gotten more creative to get a deal done. Happens all the time. The fact that it didn't in this case is a chin-rubber.

Things that make you go "Hmmmmm."

Regardless, Mike Martz says Rod Marinelli is a coaching "superstar" in the making. He just doesn't want to work for him badly enough, apparently. And now the new head coach just got his first dose, at the same time, of Lions ownership and the decision making process that goes on around here.

Can't wait to see Plan B.