‘Black Monday’ just became a lot darker for Jim Schwartz, with ESPN.com reporting the Detroit Lions have parted ways with their coach of the last five seasons.
Despite winning six of their first nine games and leading the NFC North in the early going, the Lions imploded down the stretch, dropping six of their last seven games to finish 7-9 and again out of the playoffs.
Schwartz openly campaigned to keep his job on Sunday, after the Lions dropped their season finale to the lowly Minnesota Vikings, capping their epic collapse.
“I know the way this business is, we all do, but we can’t worry about decisions that we don’t make,” Schwartz told ESPN. “We’ve got to try our very best week in and week out, and if we do, we can accept any decision that is made. I’d certainly like to be back. I feel like we have unfinished business here. We’ve come a long way in these years but we still have ground that we can make, and I’m anxious to have a chance to be able to do that.”
But it simply wasn’t meant to be — at least not with Schwartz still at the helm. The man who led the Lions from the depths of an 0-16 season in 2008, simply ran out of time in terms of getting them to where management feels they should be.
Despite leading the Lions to the playoffs in 2011, Schwartz’s team’s finished with losing records in four of his five seasons, including the last two. Overall, Schwartz went 29-51.
Perhaps sensing he was already on the hot seat, Schwartz’s frustration seemed to boil over during a Week 16 home loss to the New York Giants when he yelled at fans for booing him and his team as they left the field.
