Lions owner Bill Ford Sr. has been touted as being supremely loyal to his employees -- at least the football ones -- even to a fault. It's been his downfall on several occasions, like when he would keep certain coaches on the payroll a tad too long -- or a president/general manager who shall remain nameless.
Yet he didn't show that same patience with a Lions coach who, in retrospect, might have earned a little.
Monte Clark is still employed by the Lions. Has been for years. You can still see him around Ford Field, especially if you happen to be allowed into the press area with all the ink-stained wretches.
Monte's role is kind of clandestine, but suffice it to say that he's a sort of consultant/advisor nowadays. How much input he has, I really don't know. But he had a ton of input some 30 years ago, then lost it before his time -- if you petition me for my flawed yet heartfelt opinion.
Clark was brought over from the San Francisco 49ers in 1978. Monte got shafted there, too. But more on that later.
Clark was handed the first-ever title (in Detroit) of Director of Football Operations, in addition to head coach. That meant that Clark would have total control over everything -- personnel, trades, the draft, the whole nine. It was that control that Clark insisted upon before he would agree to come to the Lions -- largely because of his bad experience in San Francisco.
Clark was one of Don Shula's top lieutenants in Miami -- coaching the offensive line (Monte was an NFL lineman himself) during the glory days of the 1970s with the Dolphins. And it was Shula who recommended Clark to Ford, Shula still having a Detroit connection, thru Ford and from his early days as a pro assistant with the Lions.
Clark today, as a Lions consultant
But between Miami and Detroit, Clark stopped off in the Bay Area, being hired to coach the 49ers in 1976. The team started out 6-1, then slumped to finish 8-6. Despite the disappointing finish, few expected that Clark's job was in danger after just one year. But the 49ers were run by the oddball GM Joe Thomas, who was sort of a poor man's George Steinbrenner -- or Charlie Finley: impulsive, unpredictable, and meddling. Thomas wasn't an owner, but he acted like one. And Thomas impulsively fired Clark, stunning many.
After being blindsided by Thomas, Clark refused to take another head coaching job unless he had much more control over the shaping of his roster. The Lions had Russ Thomas as GM, but apparently the team's organizational chart was adjusted to allay Clark's fears, and Monte came on board, armed with a six-year contract and more clout than he'd ever had.
After 7-9 and 2-14 seasons, Clark presided over a resurgence. The Lions drafted Billy Sims in 1980 (thanks to their 2-14 mark) and the Lions became respectable instantly. They went 9-7 in '80 (after a 4-0 start), 8-8 in '81 (losing the division on the final Sunday), and 4-5 in '82 (qualifying for the playoffs in the strike-shortened year). Then the Lions won the division in 1983 (9-7) and came a crooked Eddie Murray kick away from upsetting the 49ers (how would Monte have liked THAT?) and moving into the NFC Championship Game.
But early in the '84 season, Sims went down with what would be a career-ending knee injury, and the Lions never recovered. They finished at 4-11-1. But it was their first truly bad season since the '79 debacle, so many figured Clark would be back -- especially working for the supposedly patient and loyal Ford.
Not so.
Ford fired Clark, and then inexplicably hired Darryl Rogers from the campus of Arizona State University -- possibly the old man's worst coaching hire, which is saying a lot.
That started a nosedive that wasn't reversed until the team bottomed out and was able to draft Barry Sanders in 1989.
I often wonder how the fate of the Lions would have changed, if at all, had Monte Clark been given another year or two. Clark was a fan of grind 'em out, old-fashioned football -- bred from his own playing career and his time with the Dolphins.
In fact, it was one of the Lions' best OL ever, Keith Dorney, who called Clark "the best coach I ever played for" in his book that was released several years ago. Dorney still laments over that '83 playoff loss to SF, insisting that the team Clark built in the early-1980s was Super Bowl-worthy with a break here and there. Dorney's not far off. The Lions barely missed the playoffs in 1980 and '81, so they were almost post-season qualifiers four years in a row. Certainly they were contenders.
Rogers, on the other hand, drove the Lions into the ground, his passion for football gone by the time he was fired in 1988.
If you go to a Lions game and you happen to see Monte Clark -- some of the kiddies probably don't even know what he looks like -- say Hi and thank him. He gave the Lions some good years, and was given the ziggy before his time. My opinion.
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You can read Monte's bio at the Lions' website here.
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