Among the heads many Lions fans want on a bloody spike outside Ford Field, the name of team president and CEO Rod Wood often comes up with mercifully now-fired head coach Matt Patricia and general manager Bob Quinn. It’s a curious choice to lump Wood in with the football failures, and I believe it comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what Wood does for the Lions organization.

Wood’s duties as the president are designed to take away all the non-football responsibilities for the GM, the director of football operations and the director of player personnel. Normally (but not always) those are three separate jobs, though Quinn held both the GM and director of football operations titles himself. Kyle O’Brien is the Lions VP of player personnel.

Wood is more of a CEO on the business side, which draws upon his business background. He handles things like marketing, stadium maintenance and upgrades, forming partnerships with business and the Detroit area communities, managing the ticketing and pricing, and being in charge of all the various department heads. That includes ticket sales, merchandise, equipment, medical, security, groundskeeping, events at Ford Field, and IT — among others.

Some people in Wood’s position take an active role in contract negotiations in other organizations, though there is no indication Wood gets directly involved in that capacity for the Lions. The team hired Mike Disner as the VP of football administration to largely handle the contract and cap-related duties. Disner is highly-regarded around the league and could be a candidate to take over as GM.

Quinn did work under Wood, with the GM and director of football operations being directly in charge of everything that happens on the field and in team roster management, scouting and coaching. The fact that Quinn held both jobs might be the source of some of the confusion about what Wood does for the Lions.

The roles it seems most fans actually want to be turned over beyond Quinn are O’Brien, director of player personnel Lance Newmark and senior personnel executive Jimmy Raye III. Those are the people who are responsible for assembling this roster, hiring the coaches and plotting the strategy and course of the on-field product. As of now, only Quinn has been removed from the front office. Wood will have a say in how long that lasts as part of his duties as CEO, however.