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He walked out of the doorway a little before 8 p.m. Thursday, just another passenger on Northwest Flight 1740 from Nashville, Tenn., to Detroit.

Dressed in black with a black roller bag, he blended right in with the crowd at Metro Airport.

But for Jim Schwartz, the anonymity was about to end.

Just hours before, Schwartz had agreed to a four-year contract to coach the Lions, a team that had just suffered the NFL's first 0-16 season, a team in a city aching for winning football.

A reporter and a photographer from the Free Press were waiting.

"I'm glad to be in Detroit," Schwartz said with a sheepish smile.

Schwartz, 42, spent the past eight years as Tennessee's defensive coordinator and built one of the NFL's best defenses.

He said he didn't want to say much because he didn't want to upstage today's introductory news conference at Ford Field.

"I think I'd just like to leave it, I'm really excited to be in Detroit," he said. "I'm really excited to get to work."

But Schwartz handled the ambush with good humor. As he walked through the McNamara Terminal, he was in a jovial mood and willing to have a light conversation about his arrival.

"You know what I need you guys to do tomorrow?" he told the reporter. "When we do the presser, do like the White House and say your names, so I can remember."

Schwartz laughed when asked what he was going to do that night. Have dinner with someone? Get to work? Watch film?

"Let's put it this way," he said, smiling, "I'm trying to find my way out of the airport."

The reporter joked that he should be careful about saying that, because Lions fans wanted a coach with a good sense of direction.

"Yeah, that's pretty good," Schwartz said, smiling, before changing the subject. "The airport's so different here. It cracked me up. When I came in the other time, I'm sitting at the gate, waiting to go home."

Schwartz, who was in Detroit on Monday for his second interview, changed his voice to a mock, snooty tone.

"I'm hearing, 'Flight 125, service to Paris,' " he said. "Then there's some other flight to Japan or something. Nashville's a small airport. Obviously we don't have any express trams or anything else."

Schwartz introduced himself to the photographer.

"You should have told me," he said. "I would have dressed nicer. When I came out I didn't even get a chance to hit the restroom, make sure I didn't have any parsley between my teeth."

The Lions interviewed several candidates before finally deciding Schwartz was their man and began wooing him. But they kept their cards close to the vest. Some of their candidates' names never made it to the news media.

Schwartz remembered what it was like the first time he interviewed for an NFL head coaching job, with San Francisco a few years ago.

"It's funny the secrecy that goes on," he said. "I did San Fran a while ago, and we actually did the interview in St. Louis to throw you guys off."

Finally, as Schwartz was about to leave the terminal, he gave a parting thought.

"I had a lot of college friends and just friends in general that e-mailed me or texted me or left me a voice mail over the past how many days and hours, when this whole thing started," said Schwartz, who went to Georgetown. "The one common thing they all said, 'You're going to love living in Detroit.'

"The pride that every single one of those people conveyed to me, it made the decision easy and it made me happy for my family. We're going to make this our home."

With that, Schwartz headed down the escalator and on to Ground Transportation to find his driver. But as he found out, this was only the beginning. Waiting for him at the bottom: TV crews.