Lions fire head coach Jim Caldwell after 4 seasons

ByMICHAEL ROTHSTEIN
January 1, 2018, 7:55 AM

— -- ALLEN PARK, Mich. -- The Detroit Lions have fired head coach Jim Caldwell after four seasons with the franchise, less than a year after he signed an extension.

The team made the announcement on Monday morning.

The move comes despite Caldwell, 62, having winning seasons in three of his four years. But the Lions missed the playoffs twice in the past three years, including this season, when they went 9-7.

Caldwell had an up-and-down tenure in Detroit. The Lions went 11-5 in his first season and qualified for the playoffs before losing at Dallas in the wild-card round in 2014. Then they went 7-9 in 2015, but rebounded to make the playoffs at 9-7 in 2016.

Caldwell actually had a better winning percentage in his four years in Detroit than he did during his three years in Indianapolis, when he went 26-22 and made one Super Bowl.

Caldwell's job security had been a question for a large part of the past three seasons, with at least some speculation he would be out of a job entering the last week of the season each year.

The Lions went 6-2 over the second half of the 2015 season after a 1-6 start -- good enough for general manager Bob Quinn to decide to retain Caldwell.

The following season, the Lions squandered a two-game NFC North lead with three games to play by dropping their final three games of the year after Matthew Stafford injured the middle finger on his throwing hand. The Lions made the postseason as a wild card and announced before their playoff loss to Seattle that Caldwell would be back for 2017.

The Lions failed to make the playoffs this season despite Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers being injured for the majority of it. A Christmas Eve loss to Cincinnati in a game the Lions needed to win appeared to seal the probability that Caldwell would not return for a fifth season.

Detroit still has not won a playoff game since Jan. 5, 1992, against Dallas and has not won a divisional title since 1993. Caldwell's winning percentage of .563 as Lions head coach was the highest of any permanent coach of the franchise for more than one season since Buddy Parker had a 50-24-2 record and .671 winning percentage from 1951 to '56.

Caldwell also was the first coach to have back-to-back winning seasons with the Lions since Wayne Fontes had three straight winning years from 1993 to '95. That was also the last time the Lions made the playoffs in back-to-back years.