Lions’ New-Found Success Also Buying More Years For Millen

They were both Lions, through and through. One was a player, then a scout, then an assistant coach – even a broadcaster, when radio ruled. Then he was handed the reins to the front office. The other was a Hall of Fame player, then an assistant coach, then promoted to head coach.

Yet that’s pretty much where the similarities ended. Because while Joe Schmidt, the second of the two above-described men, could have been elected mayor of Detroit in certain years, the first – Russ Thomas, was very often times targeted for a coup d’etat. The fans would have led the way with torches and gladly have directed the masses to the nearest guillotine, Thomas in tow.

Of course, there was no Internet, and no sports talk radio to speak of, and therefore no organizers for cleverly-named protests like The Millen Man March, when Russ Thomas ruled the Lions with a tightwad, iron fist in the 1960s, ‘70s, and most of the ‘80s. Yet the Lions did a lot of losing in those days, and the rumble for Thomas’s head was there – if not as public or as loud as today’s pleadings to sack the current GM, Matt Millen.

Russ Thomas, I believe, was maybe the most hated man in Detroit sports history, at the apex of the fans’ vitriol. Just because they couldn’t express their outrage into a cell phone while tooling down I-696, doesn’t make their venom for the man any less so.

Thomas presided over the team in my formative years as a sports fan, and on his watch the drafts were spotty, the money-spending was miserly, the coaching hires often curious. A typical Lions year under Thomas was 7-7, and a distant second place behind the Minnesota Vikings. The playoffs rarely beckoned.

Yet Thomas, a close friend of owner Bill Ford, had rock-solid job security. His time as GM was about 25 years, after Nick Kerbaway left to helm the Pistons in the early-‘60s.

In the mid-‘70s, the Lions had an extremely talented player named Ron Jessie. He was a tall, fleet-footed wide receiver and kick returner who had been a track star in college. He was heading into the prime of his career.

But there was always the issue of money with Russ Thomas, and when there wasn’t enough of it tossed in Jessie’s direction, he took his gazelle-like legs and soft receiving hands westward, to the Los Angeles Rams. Thomas tried to pry a young running back named Cullen Bryant from the Rams as compensation. Bryant didn’t want any part of the Lions. He fought the proposed exile to Detroit tooth and nail. Thomas settled on some draft picks, none of them used wisely anyway.

So Jessie joined the Rams, and was reunited with their head coach, Chuck Knox. A couple years earlier, Knox – a loyal Schmidt assistant, was passed over for the head coaching job here when Schmidt surrendered in his lost power struggle with Thomas. Rams owner Carroll Rosenbloom knew Knox had something, and coaxed him to take over his team. In Los Angeles, Knox led the Rams to one divisional title after the other. They were perennial Super Bowl contenders, thanks to players like Ron Jessie.

Ten years before Knox fled, the Lions let another good one wriggle off their hook. They had under their employ a bright, young secondary coach – the last time the Lions were truly a good football team until Schmidt took them over.


Don Shula, Lions assistant (1960-62)

In subsequent years, when the Lions would get their tails kicked by the Baltimore Colts and then see the whole league get pasted every week by the Miami Dolphins, they’d wonder how good they could have been, had they let Don Shula become their head coach.

Millen, you could say, has perhaps surpassed Thomas in terms of fans’ detest.


The most-hated man in Detroit sports history, since Russ Thomas (or ever?)

The other day, I found myself trapped in the car, a captive audience of sports talk radio. I could have turned the dial, but they sucked me in.

How much credit, the jabbermouths wanted to know, should Matt Millen get for the Lions’ spiffy 6-2 start in 2007?

Not surprisingly, the feeling was unanimous.

NONE!

WXYT Co-host Mike Valenti, kind of a poor man’s Mad Dog Russo (for those fellow oldtimers), literally started yelling into his microphone – not uncommon for him.

“He (Millen) deserves none. Zip. Zilch. Nada. NOTHING. It’s all (coach) Rod Marinelli and (offensive coordinator) Mike Martz. Even Tom Lewand (the salary cap guru) is a better player personnel guy than Millen,” Valenti railed.

The notion that Lewand, a numbers cruncher, is a better judge of football talent than Matt Millen, is laughable. And so is the contention that Millen deserves zero credit for the Lions’ resurgence. But dudes like Mike Valenti aren’t paid to be the beacons of common sense, or rationale.

Thankfully, partner Drew Sharp of the Free Press, frequent wielder of the poison pen when it comes to Millen, voiced some reason.

“You can’t say Millen deserves zero credit,” Sharp said, echoing my out-loud thought as I coasted in traffic. “Because he’s the guy who hired Marinelli.”

“Do you think that was Millen’s call?,” Valenti asked.

Oy vay. Who needs to be rational, if one is wearing headphones blabbing into a microphone?

But I chuckled anyway, because what the callers and Valenti don’t seem to want to accept is that, thanks to this jackrabbit start, the Matt Millen Era figures to have been extended by at least another two, three years. If Ford didn’t fire Millen BEFORE this, what makes you think he’ll do so imminently?

Millen just might approach Russ Thomas’s length of tenure in the Lions’ front office, when all is said and done. Especially said.

Sorry to break it to you.