After Jimmy Garoppolo took his first of three knees last Sunday to clinch the San Francisco 49ers' NFC championship game win over the Green Bay Packers, Fox cameras cut to a jubilant 49ers sideline and caught a familiar face wearing a not-so-familiar grin: Former Detroit Lions general manager Martin Mayhew.
Wearing a gray suit and a wool 49ers cap on his head, Mayhew shook hands with cornerback Richard Sherman and back-slapped head coach Kyle Shanahan, as players and staff members celebrated wildly around him.
"It was pretty amazing," Mayhew told the Free Press in a 30-minute phone interview this week. "I went to the Super Bowl my fourth year in the league and probably like a lot of people that go early, you think you're going to be back. So I'm thinking like at least every three or four years I should be going. And this is 28 years later, so it's been a long road to get back, but I'm excited about where we are and the opportunity that's in front of us."
The 49ers head to Miami this week with an opportunity to win their sixth Super Bowl and first in the 25 years when they play the AFC champion Kansas City Chiefs.
Mayhew, the 49ers' vice president of player personnel, will be there, too, with a chance to win his second ring � his first as an executive � and perhaps change the narrative about a front-office career that time has smiled more kindly upon.
Fired midway through the 2015 season after 6{ years as Lions GM, Mayhew helped raise the organization from subterranean depths no NFL team had seen before.
The Lions had a losing record during his tenure and failed to win a playoff game. Their drought in that second category is now a humbling 28 years.
But they made the playoffs three years after going 0-16, and twice in Mayhew's six full seasons, and had arguably the best offensive and separately defensive seasons in modern franchise history under his watch.
None of that is to be celebrated like an NFC championship game win. Mayhew will be the first to admit that, and say his Lions teams needed to do more.
But 11 years after he took over for Matt Millen, with a handful of his former draft picks (Laken Tomlinson, Kyle Van Noy, Riley Reiff, Quandre Diggs, Larry Warford) playing key roles on playoff teams, it's time to admit he was a better GM than anyone has given him credit for.
