Mariucci wasn't suited for young team like Lions

	Steve Mariucci's laid-back style didn't work well with the young Lions. AP

Following his surprising departure from the San Francisco 49ers after the 2002 season, the Detroit Lions couldn't wait to hire Michigan native Steve Mariucci. The team's CEO/general manager Matt Millen even went back on his word that he would bring back coach Marty Mornhinweg for a third year.

But after three failure-filled seasons together, the Lions couldn't wait to fire Mariucci either, ending his tenure Monday with five games remaining.

This time, there was no shock value to the news, because the marriage of Mariucci and the struggling Lions was perhaps destined to end in divorce. It was your classic case of a bad fit from the start.

The style that worked for Mariucci when he took over in San Francisco in 1997 didn't work with the Lions. The 49ers were a veteran team coming off the George Siefert era. They didn't require a lot of discipline, nurturing or teaching, and Mariucci's easy-going, personable nature provided just the right touch.

But such was not the case in Detroit, where the young Lions were rebuilding through the draft, trying to establish an identity and end a playoff drought that began with the 2000 season. Nowhere was Mariucci's lack of success more apparent than with Lions quarterback of the future, Joey Harrington.

Mariucci and his staff never really believed in the 2002 first-round pick. And Millen felt that undermined Harrington's chances for success.

Mariucci also never found a way to extract much production from all of Detroit's first-round picks on offense. Receivers Charles Rogers, Roy Williams and Mike Williams have yet to be worthy of their draft status, and running back Kevin Jones hasn't followed up this year on his outstanding rookie debut of 2004.

Millen has invested heavily in those players and staked his shaky front-office reputation on what they will or won't eventually accomplish. In the past two years, Millen came to believe that Mariucci's talents were better suited to a team that was already well formed rather than one in the process of developing young players as the core of its roster.

While Mariucci found out you can't go home again, many believe he may not stray far from his Michigan roots. Speculation has Mariucci surfacing as a candidate at Michigan State, should the Spartans fire head coach John L. Smith after the Spartans' disappointing 5-6 season.

Others say Mariucci is more likely to take a year off from coaching to seek out a TV analyst job and try to return to the sidelines for the 2007 season. Whatever he does in the future, Mariucci's Detroit experience was anything but a successful homecoming.