Millen Addresses His “Bad Guy” Status In Detroit

We hope that Matt Millen keeps his latest job with NFL Network long enough to eventually work a game at Ford Field in Detroit. Because it could get very interesting. Millen, arguably the worst G.M. in NFL history, presided over seven of the darkest years that any pro franchise ever had to endure. Though his front-office career was euthanized early in the 2008 season, the team that Matt built became the first-ever 0-16 franchise that pro football has seen. With the same thick skin, hard head, and blind spots that characterized his stubborn refusal to realize that he was unfit to run an NFL team (the job is harder when you never actually move from Pennsylvania to Michigan), Millen sums up his time in Motown by explaining, essentially, that every story needs a villain, and that he fit the bill in Detroit. “There’s nothing I can do about [Detroit],” Millen told Don Banks of SI.com. “All I can do is from here on out. I understand. In Detroit, they need a bad guy. I was a bad guy. I was to blame for the fall of the auto industry and the housing market. Somehow, I had something to do with [Detroit mayor] Kwame Kilpatrick [resigning], although I’m not sure what. But that’s what happens when you lose in this game. You give everyone a cheap and easy story to jump on.’' But Millen didn’t simply lose. He lost like no one else ever has lost. And when it became clear that owner William Clay Ford Sr. wouldn’t fire him, Millen still stayed. And then Millen accepted a ridiculously lucrative extension to the ridiculously lucrative contract he received in 2001. And he defended it at one point by saying that, if the Lions fire him, he won’t accept a severance. And then when the Lions fired him and stopped paying him, he made a claim with the league office in an effort to get the bulk of the money he did nothing to earn. Then, as he was trying to get more money from the Lions that he doesn’t deserve, he waltzed right back into his broadcasting career, with multiple suitors inexplicably lining up for his services. Along the way, he reportedly reneged on a handshake deal with NBC to take a better job with ESPN. Then, after he signed a contract committing himself exclusively to ESPN, he finagled a side job at NFL Network. So maybe he’s viewed as a “bad guy” in Detroit because (drum roll), he IS one. Hopefully, folks other than those in Detroit will at some point begin to figure that out.