Former Maryland head football coach Randy Edsall hired by Detroit Lions

Former Maryland football coach Randy Edsall is back on his feet, as the NFL's Detroit Lions hired him as their director of football research/special projects, the team announced Sunday.

Edsall was fired midway his fifth season as Maryland's head coach, going 22-34 in four-and-a-half years. While in College Park, his Terps never beat a ranked team and were 2-4 in 2015 when the university announced his firing.

This is Edsall's second dip into the NFL, as he served Jacksonville's defensive backs coach from 1994 to 1997. In a bit of a role-reversal, he will be working under Lions general manager Bob Quinn. Edsall was Quinn's boss when Quinn served as a grad assistant during Edsall's tenure as head coach at Connecticut. The team release provides an especially vague description of Edsall's position:

The football research department assists in all aspects of game preparation, and also provides information to the coaching, personnel and football administration departments to help improve the team's decisions in the draft, free agency and on gameday.

We're working to see what financial ramifications - if any - this has for the roughly $2.1 million Maryland owes Edsall for this next year