Who will be the Detroit Lions head coach next season?

Who will be the Lions head coach next season?

So what will Sheila Ford Hamp do? That is the real question.

It’s possible Sheila could surprise everyone and fire Matt Patricia and Bob Quinn during the bye week. After all, Martha Firestone Ford fired general manager Martin Mayhew and team president Tom Lewand during the 2015 season.

Then of course there would be the interim coaching situation which one would have to believe would be offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell since he has the most experience and an interim’s job is to basically do the best with the chaos surrounding the team when a change like that is made during the season.

It would also be considered very Lionesque for Sheila to name Bevell the permanent head coach instead of even looking at what’s out there.

In the end, should a change be made, this will be the hiring that will cement the fan’s opinion of Sheila for the good or the bad. Because there will be no hiding from whether she was right or wrong. Did she hire a dynamic coach who changes the culture and actually leads the Lions to the Super Bowl or did she hire the next Rod Marinelli?

Now I don’t run the Lions, nor will I at any point in the near future as far as I can tell, but if I was making the choice, it would be an easy one. I would go with Robert Saleh.

The reasons are simple, I believe that he would love the challenge of coming home to build a winner. This would be a labor of love. Secondly, he is a players coach that they respect and who gets the most out of his players.

Saleh also has a dynamic, energetic personality and if nothing else, I believe he could, and would, turnaround the defense. That’s my two cents worth, but I don’t get to make that call. So if I’m guessing who will be the Lions head coach next year, I would have to say it will be Matt Patricia.

I know almost everyone groaned at that guess, but even if the Lions are 0-4 at their bye week, I don’t see Sheila pulling the trigger on Patricia. Then I see the Lions, maybe getting a little healthier and possibly winning 5-6 games and ownership considering this progress.

So are we looking at next season’s coach already? I suppose only time will tell. My gut says that Sheila will have to make a move after this season, but how many times have the Ford’s ever been in sync with our guts?