Lions brass didn’t offer any comment on head coach Jim Caldwell’s future after the team was eliminated from playoff contention on Sunday and Caldwell said he wasn’t going to “defend myself” when he was asked about the possibility of being fired when the year comes to an end.
Caldwell said Tuesday that’s “nothing changed” and that “everybody gets evaluated” when a season comes to an end. Caldwell did share some of his own evaluations of why the team fell short of making the playoffs this year.
“There hasn’t been anything across the board that we’ve been good at. The best way to probably tell you that you can an indication of where we are, the great thing about the National Football League is all you have do is look at your record,” Caldwell said, via ESPN.com. “And we’re just a little bit above average and a little bit above average is not good enough.You know, there are no bowl games in this league. And so we got to get better. We got to get better in every area. It’s a team sport. There’s not anything that we just absolutely excelled at all across the board.”
Caldwell said he wasn’t going to defend himself and those comments back that up as they fall short of a ringing endorsement for the job he did during the 2017 season. If the Lions decision makers draw the same conclusions, there will likely be someone else trying to achieve excellence come 2018.