Dave Birkett

Detroit Free Press

MOBILE, Ala. – Bob Quinn sat high up in the stands at Ladd-Peebles Stadium watching the North team practice at the Senior Bowl.

Jim Caldwell was to his left, college scouting director Lance Newmark sat next to Caldwell, and new director of player personnel Kyle O’Brien joined the brain trust of Detroit Lions watching the happenings on the field.

For Quinn, who was hired Jan. 8 as Lions GM, it was a rare opportunity in his first three weeks on the job to immerse himself in actual football.

Quinn, in a 10-minute conversation with beat writers at the Senior Bowl today, said his tenure with the Lions so far has been filled with time-consuming administrative work and decisions of all sizes that affect the present and future of the team.

“Nothing unforeseen,” Quinn said. “Just a lot of stuff that colleagues of mine have told me in years past, (that) your office is going to be a revolving door, which is totally true. Sometimes I’ve just got to close the door and I need to watch some football.”

With free agency six weeks away and the draft a month and a half after that, Quinn has plenty of football on his horizon.

Already, he’s made a handful of notable changes to the team’s personnel department, hiring O’Brien and scout Ron Miles, firing longtime scout Scott McEwen and vice president of football administration Cedric Saunders, and perhaps most importantly deciding to keep Caldwell as coach.

While the Ford family’s preference to keep Caldwell and Lions’ players strong support for their coach certainly played a factor in the decision, Quinn reiterated today that the biggest reason he brought Caldwell back for a third season was their shared philosophy on how to build and run a football team.

“Just being able to get on the same page about how to acquire players, how to develop players,” Quinn said. “I said in my press conference I’m not a coach so I’m not going to be coaching them. It’s really of the system in place, to get a system in place to where he can be flexible to the players that I bring in, to develop them and to kind of mesh them into his offensive and defensive and special teams systems.”

Quinn said he and Caldwell met for 10 to 12 hours over a two-day span the week he was hired as a way to get to know each other.

He didn’t talk to any players before making his decision, but relied on the counsel of others across the league.

“It was me and Jim sitting in a meeting room, talking football and talking about life, talking about a lot of things,” Quinn said. “I’m not going to get into specifics of every nook and cranny that we talked about but it was constructive meetings that after the course of two days and about 10 to 12 hours, I came to that decision.”

Caldwell declined an interview request this week, and while Quinn remains a mystery to much of the NFL – several scouts, coaches and current and former team executives who spoke to the Free Press on the condition of anonymity this week said they did not know of Quinn before he was hired as GM, while many in the agent community did because of his work setting up player workouts for the New England Patriots – those who have a history with him continue to applaud the hire.

“Great guy. Salt of the Earth type of guy,” said Jacksonville Jaguars general manager Dave Caldwell, who knew Quinn as an area scout a decade ago. “Blue-collar. Hard worker. They chose a great person for that role.”

Houston Texans defensive coordinator Romeo Crennel, a Patriots assistant in the early 2000s when Quinn was a pro scout with the team, recalled Quinn as a diligent and thorough worker.

“He was young (when I knew him), but he was a good hard worker, energetic guy,” Crennel said. “Always tried to do everything you asked of him because he knew that if he made the best of it, he might get an opportunity like he’s gotten. So I’m happy for him and wish him all the best.”

Briefly: Senior personnel executive Brian Xanders will remain with the Lions after he was passed over for the Cleveland Browns’ top scouting job on Wednesday. Xanders, who interviewed with Browns owner Jimmy Haslam on Tuesday, has been working with the Lions all week.

Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.

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Lions shake up business operations, fire two VPs

Lions shake up business operations, fire two VPs