51% said yes.
49% said no.
Your thoughts?
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No, because he was such a piss poor game manager. Willing to bet he still has about 100 timeouts in his basement closet.
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Lol, no. He couldn’t win with arguably the best roster the Lions had in the Superbowl era in 2014 (as unbelievably sad as that is) so how would he have won a playoff game with one of these watered down Quinn rosters?
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Not with Quinn in the front office.
No.
Chill! I acknowledge that he had a great draft. Unfortunately, that doesn’t guarantee even one win.
No. We were on the decline (talent-wise) and…
With Caldwell comes Ron Prince, Teryl Austin and Jim Bob Cooter.
Also with Caldwell comes 2 more drafts who Quinn admits he didn’t know how to draft a Linebacker for.
Absolutely no.
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I think if he made some coaching changes then the answer is … yes.
He had the team close to pulling it off but he needed to get a new OL coach and a better OC. I don’t think he was willing to make those changes however.
I liked Caldwell but he was loyal to a fault. I think BQ should have tried to get him to make staff changes.
I do not fault BQ for making a coaching change. But he should have went with an experienced HC.
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Not a chance. It’s tough to get wins in football. You need contributions from all 11 guys on the field. Jim wasn’t having that nonsense though, he would decide to roll with just 9 guys and see what happened in must win games. His players loved him though, so there’s that.
The reason Jim Caldwell isn’t our coach anymore, as BELOVED as he apparently was, is because he couldn’t win must win games. 0-2 in the playoffs, and choked away a season where every qb in the division got hurt and the playoffs should’ve been a gimmie. He just had to beat a weak Ravens team and a downtrodden Bengals team, and couldn’t do either.
IMO, no. Caldwell was 4-25 against teams with winning records and 0-2 in the playoffs. I didn’t see that pattern changing any time soon.
This. All this.
Jim Caldwell with Darrell Bevell or even Jim Bob with a decent o line coach wins a playoff game.
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That’s approximately where I’m at. What if Caldwell had Bevell? 
I loved Caldwell as a mentor to these young dudes that we forget are just out of their teens. He was so conservative that the guys weren’t having fun with it. Most boring coach ever. If he had just stayed the HC, and let the OC do what he does…and have an actual OC, instead of someone who should have been a position coach at best…we could have done much better.
That said, he pretty much had an 8-8 roster (only because of Stafford being able to slang that thang all over the field). Probably below average roster, with below average OC, and Matt was still able to boost us to borderline playoff team.
Damn, I miss Austin’s defense now.
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I like this question at this time.
To me the answer is NO…Caldwell would not have won a playoff game here as his team would never be overwhelming in terms of talent.
I liked the Caldwell hire, supported him through his four NFL seasons here and supported moving on from him when we did (2018). He had is shot but it was time to move on.
Caldwell had a GREAT roster in 2014. And in two critical moments his team shit the bed. A punt return for a TD on the road in Green Bay and the Dallas game with all the issues there. I also think about the drop fest in the Seattle Wild Card game in 2016.
2016 was a wild ride with Stafford being incredible and Slay taking over a few games (the Philly game comes to mind). But there were just too many mistakes by coaches and players time and time again in critical moments. As great of a players coach Jim was his players often laid eggs…not Stafford overall though. I am talking about critical drops, penalties, miscues (like the special team TD allowed in 2014 to the Packers) and so on. Cavin jumping off sides in that Wild Card loss late. Caldwell not knowing the rule about batting a ball out of bounds in the Seattle game. That terrible formation call V., the Packers on the Hail Mary in Detroit 2015 (Ziggy was in the middle of the field!). Just too many unforced errors to feel good about him after 4 seasons. Too many player and coaching mental gaffs that were never going away under Caldwell.
There were great moments too under Caldwell so credit there. But Jim was loyal too long to his staff at times AND Jim often didn’t get the most from his players in critical times.
My answer is no, Jim would not have been able to win a playoff game here.
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Funny about this. I went to the Lions game at New England that year and I heard so many fans around me in the stadium asking how is this team 7-3 when they basically wet the bed.
But I was basically sloppy the entire time I went to Boston, so maybe the team was as well.
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Touche 
That game is the example of the kind of thing Caldwell’s team often did…little and important mistakes.
The Lions were uo 3-0 then down 7-6 before we kicked off to them early in the second quarter. We then allow an 81 yard kick return to Amendola. One pass play (a 16 yarder), a Sub penalty and then a TD and the Pats were up 14-6. We pinned them deep at their own 7 yard line before they march 93 yards and a TD to go up 21-6 and the game was over at that point. Prater misses a 53 yard FG with 40 seconds left and we allow a Patriots FG with ;04 second left to end the first half 24-6. The Lions scored 1 more FG in that game as Patricia’s defense KILLED us and the Pats offense ate our best Lions defense in 30 years for lunch.
No way the Pats were that much better than us in terms of talent but they killed us. To be fair that was year one under Caldwell but the killer mental mistakes kept coming back game after game year after year.
I remember that game well. Was newly married watching it in a sports bar with my wife. Left the bar at halftime–couldn’t take it any more, nor justifying staying to watch the rest.
Meh…I miss haing Schwartz as a head coach…I think he didn’t get along with old man Ford or maybe Mayhew.
And it made it easy fire him when he had a bad year.
I will be honest and say, I was pretty drunk that whole day. But I do remember the asshole fan in front of me, the awesomely cool fans behind me and the fantastic fans in the tailgate. But the decent fans behind me saying that Stafford is forked no matter what he does with that time.
Quinn is still picking the players. Under Caldwell we were not a good team. We managed in his last 2 years to stay relatively healthy, have some easy schedules and even had a season in which every win we could muster was a comeback victory. These teams were ridiculously close to 3-13. Much closer than they were to actually challenging for playoff wins. Did he need to go? Absolutely. For the same reason that if we don’t turn it around this year, Quinn and Patricia should be fired. As an NFL coach and GM, you get 3-4 years to turn a team into a contender. If you can’t do that than you are gone.
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I don’t like reliving the past unless is to be reminded of good thing, thing to learn… but no… like the guys a sa man… not a coach who’s going to win a SB imho… not a good or bad thing, just not him as I see it