But not just to drown his sorrows on Bourbon Street, as tempting as that might be.
No. What Hird needs to do is get himself an appointment with Sean Payton, the most recent, and certainly most high-profile head coach in professional sport to find himself suspended by 12 months by his league.
The NFL season starts next week and Payton will be back on the sidelines as coach of the New Orleans Saints for the first time in a year after missing all of last season for his part in what became known as 'Bountygate'.
Payton initially denied his part in a scandal in which bounties were paid to Saints players if they were able to knock opposition players out of the game. His senior defensive coach, Gregg Williams, was the architect of the "pay for pain" regime at the Saints.
It later emerged that despite being warned by his general manager that the league was investigating the matter, Payton did not move to shut it down, and this was a contributing factor in the NFL handing down its unprecedented penalty to Payton.
The terms of Payton's suspension were severe. He was allowed no communication with any coaches, players, officials or owners of the Saints. He spent his suspension living in Dallas, coaching his son's junior team and undertaking a fanatical fitness regime.
He wasn't able to attend Saints matches or indeed, any NFL match, although late in the season, the league made an exception when superstar Saints quarterback Drew Brees lined up in a match where he was expected to break a longstanding NFL record for touchdown passes. But Payton was confined to a corporate box and had no communication with anyone from the team on the day.
Because he served the suspension in what was regarded as exemplary fashion, the NFL actually lifted his suspension shortly after New Orleans finished its season (it missed the playoffs) and allowed him to take charge of key off-season activities such as free agency, the draft and coaching changes.
The restrictions on Hird are nowhere near as strict. Whereas Payton was all but warned off NFL venues, Hird can still go to the footy and watch the Bombers. He might even be able to attend training.
And because the suspension is for 12 months as of last Sunday, he could conceivably coach the Bombers in the last game of 2014 and in the finals.
The cynics will say that Hird will come out of this fresh and rested and in all likelihood, with a two-year contract extension. He might recoup some of the estimated $700,000 salary he will forfeit by working in the media where he will surely be in demand.
Of course, it is more complex than that. For while Hird will be able to set the guiding principles for whoever coaches Essendon next year (and we would assume that, anticipating his suspension, high-level plans for next season are already in place) the Bombers will suffer from not having Hird around the club for the myriad of daily and weekly decisions that the coach needs to make.
WWJD (What Would James Do?) might become the mantra at Essendon.
In terms of taking a hiatus from our game, the only precedent was in 1988 when Hawthorn handed the coaching reins for one year to Alan Joyce after Allan Jeans fell seriously ill.
"I met the board and they made it clear Allan had a contract with the club and would be coming back, so it was going to be for just one year. It didn’t worry me in that context," Joyce said in 2011 in The Golden Years, a book celebrating Hawthorn's 10 premierships.
It couldn't have worked out any better for Joyce – who delivered the Hawks their seventh premiership with a 96-point thrashing of Melbourne in the Grand Final. Many believe the 1988 team was the best Hawthorn team of the lot.
Joyce was director of football at Hawthorn before standing in for Jeans and was given complete freedom to do as he wished with the side.
"I'd seen us lose the 1987 Grand Final to Carlton, which was pretty ordinary. It was a poor performance by us, so when I took over as coach I called the team into a room at Glenferrie Oval and at my very first meeting I told them we had to return to what our roots were."
The Hawks of 1988 were as tough as they were brilliant and played exactly as Joyce demanded of them. Jeans was left to recuperate for the year and rarely attended games, but when his health improved did some recruiting for the club towards the end of the year. But he didn’t venture anywhere near training or the coach's box on match days.
A few weeks after the season, Jeans returned as coach and Joyce was back as director of football, and after a seamless transition, the Hawks won the flag once again.
In the Hawthorn style of the time, it was all familial and sealed with nothing more than a handshake.
But you get the feeling already that Hird will approach his return to coaching in 2015 the way Payton has flagged how he will appear on the sidelines from next weekend.
Not only will he be as smart and talented as ever, he told one interviewer recently, "I'll be angry, too."
