When the Detroit Lions relieved general manager Bob Quinn and head coach Matt Patricia of their duties on Nov. 28, Lions owner Sheila Ford Hamp said a search for their replacements would begin immediately.
"I'm going to work as hard as I can along with (team president) Rod (Wood) and we are going to make this an extremely thorough and comprehensive search," Hamp said. "We're going to do the very best we can."
As part of that process, the Lions conducted interviews this week with internal GM candidates Kyle O'Brien, Lance Newmark and Rob Lohman.
O'Brien is in his 18th season in the NFL and his fourth with the Lions. In his first season in Detroit, he worked as the team's director of player personnel, before being promoted to the team's vice president of player personnel in 2017. He's been Quinn's No. 2 man in the department in his current role since 2017. Over the span of his NFL career, O'Brien has worked in player personnel for four different teams (Detroit, Jacksonville, Kansas City and New England) in capacities that covered both pro and college scouting.
Newmark is in his 25th year in the NFL and 23rd in the Lions player personnel department. This season is Newmark's fourth as the Lions director of player personnel, having been elevated to the position in May of 2017. In his current role, Newmark helps oversee the department's college and pro scouting operations.
This is Lohman's 14th season with the Lions, and he is currently the club's director of pro scouting. Lohman worked two seasons (2014-15) as the assistant director of pro personnel before being named the team's assistant director of pro scouting in 2016. He took over as the team's pro scouting director in 2019. In his current role, Lohman leads the pro scouting staff and oversees all pro player evaluation, the advance scouting process, free agency, and the daily monitoring of player transactional movement. He spent six years in the Houston Texans scouting department before coming to Detroit.
The Lions are expected to start interviewing external candidates not currently employed by another team in the coming weeks. Hamp and Wood can't interview front office candidates currently employed by one of the league's 31 other teams until after the regular season is over.
