Notes: Martin Mayhew named new Washington GM

Although there have not been any former Detroit head coaches who have gone on to helm other pro teams since the Dolphins became the first AFL expansion team, the same can no longer be said about former Detroit general managers. The Washington Football Team made it official on Friday that Martin Mayhew is their new general manager. The setup will be kind of odd, though, according to The MMQB’s Albert Breer: despite being general manager, Mayhew will report to head coach Ron Rivera rather than the other way around.

Mayhew came to Detroit in 2001 as a senior vice president and eventually served as the general manager of the team from 2008 to 2015. Following his departure in 2015, Mayhew spent a year with the New York Giants as director of football operations and was then hired by San Francisco as a senior personnel executive. While there, he notably pushed for the team to trade for guard Laken Tomlinson (who Mayhew had drafted in 2015). The move worked splendidly for Tomlinson, who excelled and earned himself a lucrative three-year deal.

Thanks to a new rule implemented in 2020 to encourage the development of minority coaches and executives, San Francisco will receive bonus third-round draft picks in the next three drafts (2021, 2022, and 2023). In addition to Mayhew, the Niners lost Robert Saleh to the New York Jets, triggering the higher level of compensation under the rule.

As for the “Welcome back to DC” on the image posted by the team’s official Twitter account, it is because Mayhew played cornerback for Washington in the 1990s and in fact played in Super Bowl XXVI (which they won). So it is indeed a homecoming of sorts for the former Lions general manager, and we wish him much success against the Dallas Cowboys in his new role. Now, on to the rest of today’s Notes:

• Justin Rogers with the Detroit News wrote a piece about new Lions head coach Dan Campbell’s schematic flexibility on offense.

• Aggressive play call enthusiast Jeremy Reisman dug back into the vault to provide more context to a cool story new head coach Dan Campbell told. This is the initial tweet of an interesting thread on going for it at the one-yard line:

• According to Andrew Marchand at the New York Post, you might not have seen the last of Philip Rivers. The Worldwide Leader may have plans to feature the former quarterback on Monday Night Football broadcasts.

• For future reference:

• The mock drafts have begun. The NFL.com’s Daniel Jeremiah has the Lions selecting a stud wide receiver in the first round. Dave Birkett at the Detroit Free Press thinks if the team doesn’t go for a quarterback, trading for more picks as Jeremiah suggests they try to do is a good idea.

• The Detroit Lions are looking for your votes to help determine their nominee for the 2020 Don Shula High School Football Coach of the Year award: