He finally did it. Didn’t think he had it in him, did ya?

You were wrong. After his team began its annual meltdown early this year, William Clay Ford, owner of the 0-3 Detroit Lions, anticipated the inevitable rage of the hometown fan base and made the move that virtually all of Michigan had been calling for since the burst of the dot-com bubble. Ford fired Matt Millen. Millen’s final record as Lions GM and President was 31-83.

This time, the Detroit Lions were finally a step ahead. It’s the first time they’ve been in such position since the Barry Sanders era. And, not coincidentally, it was the end of that era that created the first pothole for this last era.

When Millen was hired in 2001, one of his first moves was trying to coax Sanders out of retirement. Turns out, this was actually the first sign of a problem. It was like the bed wetting that precedes the animal torture by eight years and the serial killing by 20. Hired to move the franchise forward and into the future, Millen began by desperately looking back and into the past. It didn’t work out – the Sanders move or the eight years that followed it.

Millen is a classy man. He’s certainly no serial killer. Though you’re excused if you watched the protests in Detroit and mistakenly thought he was.

Had we ever seen a city so united against one of its own? Thanksgivings at Fords Field drew more hostility than an NRA gathering in Berkely. There were makeshift parades through the Motor City titled the Millen Man March. Their theme? Give Millen a dose of Donald Trump. The loudest cheers at Lions home games were often reserved for the first guy who could dupe the jumbotraun cameraman into filming him right before exposing his Fire Millen sign.

Angry protests didn’t mar the end of the Millen era; they defined the entire Millen era. The Motor City was in protest for eight years.

And nothing could take the edge off. The city’s auto industry tanked and lost enough money to buy a few small countries. Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was a modern Boss Tweed. Global warming never acted fast enough to defeat the icy hell that is winter near the Great Lakes.

Still, problems all around them, the people of Motown always found room for Millen in the anger account of their emotions bank. Even outsiders got on the GM’s case. Sportswriters and talking heads ran out of similes and metaphors for trashing the guy. Fans of other teams took to bashing Millen. After all, you can watch an unconscious organization continue to get beaten and kicked for only so long. Even college basketball expert/pro football dilettante Dick Vitale – a man who couldn’t be nicer if he wore sandals and grew a beard and long hair – shared harsh words for Millen after the firing of Steve Mariucci.

It wasn’t like Millen didn’t try. In fact, he tried more than anyone in football not named Al Davis. He tried four different head coaches (Marty Mornhinweg, Steve Mariucci, Dick Jauron and Rod Marinelli), three different starting quarterbacks (Charlie Batch, Joey Harrington – the hallmark player of the Millen era – and Jon Kitna), enough top-dollar wide receivers to start a township and more defensive and offensive schemes and strategies than you’d encounter in 1,000 games of Risk.

The more Millen tried, the more he failed. And the more angry everyone got. Refusing to quit, Millen was forced to make just enough public appearances to adequately acknowledge his mistakes. The rest of the time he strived for reclusiveness. It got to where the Lions jumbotran cameraman was avoiding two images: those of fans with Fire Millen signs, and those of Millen himself.

It’s sad, really. Before taking the Detroit job, Millen was a star on camera. He was one of the most popular commentators on FOX. His gift for mixing humor and insight gave him a unique credibility with viewers. Now, unless Millen develops some darn good selective amnesia, his humor has ostensibly declined. And, unless viewers develop the same kind of amnesia, so has his credibility.