The Detroit Lions are going through a coaching transition now, so none of them really expected to be playing for a different coach when the survey was taken during the season -- and certainly none of them thought they would be playing for Jim Caldwell.

None of the Lions mentioned Caldwell as the coach they’d most like to play for, at least in part because he wasn’t a head coach at the time so he wasn’t included at all as part of the survey.

But this is who Detroit will have as its head coach now, a much different man than the prior Lions coach, Jim Schwartz, and a different guy than the man who won the survey of over 300 NFL players, Seattle’s Pete Carroll.

From his days at USC, Carroll is a guy who most people who enjoy fun would seem to want to play for. He’s demanding, but keeps things light. He likes to prank his players on occasion. He’s been known to motivate in different ways.

He is, in many ways, the antithesis of what many NFL coaches appear to be. He lets his personality show through and it is an engaging one, to be certain.

Lions players were all over in terms of coaches they wanted to play for, but that shouldn’t be surprising. A lot of times, the personality of a coach has to mesh with the personalities in the locker room. And winning helps, too. So depending what you value in a coach, that would be why players selected who they did.