Counterpoint: Letting Matt Patricia go would be the right move for the Lions
The Lions didn’t beat great teams, but beat the teams they needed to
“The Lions did go 9-7 in 2017, but only one of those nine wins were against a team with a winning record, a divisional win over the Vikings.”
On its surface, it looks like beating the best teams would be the litmus test for success, but those games don’t tell the entire story. The Lions’ struggles against good teams are well-documented, but they also *beat* most teams that were directly competing with them for playoff spots.
The Lions had the challenge of playing in an NFC, which, at the time, was far better than the AFC, meaning the Lions not only had to play a tougher schedule but fight off a host of other wild card contenders. In order to get to the playoffs in 2016, the Lions needed to beat five teams that ended up finishing within two games of them in the wild card race to hold on to their playoff spot.
The Lions weren’t beating the best teams, but they were beating the teams they needed to beat to get into the playoffs, which, as the Ravens, Giants, and Packers have proved, is all you need to have a chance at a Super Bowl.
9-7 wasn’t so bad
Jon argues that Bob Quinn’s “9-7” quip “was setting an unrealistic expectation for his first coaching hire to win immediately.” Which is fair. It is unrealistic. Regression while the team figures out the new system makes sense, but not the amount of regression and lack of progress the Lions have shown, especially on defense.
After finishing 16th in points allowed and 10th in yards allowed in 2018, the Lions have fallen off a cliff, ranking 24th in points and 30th in yards in 2019, *after* being “two offseasons into meticulously picking off Caldwell’s system players and picking up Patricia’s system players to replace them.”
If we take a step back and look at the team’s performance on the whole, in the Lions’ last two 32 games under Caldwell, the team went 18-14. After only 25 games under Patricia, the team has already surpassed that number of losses (15), not including an embarrassing tie with the Cardinals in week one. Even in his *first* two seasons, when he had to establish his system just like Patricia has, Caldwell only lost 14 games.
Jon argues that “the Lions just don’t have the necessary pieces to let Patricia run this defense how he wants to successfully.” He puts the majority of the blame on general manager Bob Quinn: “The lack of talent on the Lions defensive front is making it hard to pin the majority of the struggles on Patricia or even evaluate what he can do properly. This would make it hard for me to fire Patricia this early in the rebuild because make no mistakes about it; this is a rebuild.”
While I don’t disagree that the Lions don’t have much talent, they have intentionally acquired a lot of Patricia’s guys, ex-Patriots and players who supposedly fit his scheme, throughout two offseasons, only for the defense to continue to fall on its face repeatedly.
I also don’t disagree that Bob Quinn is a big part of the problem—Patricia himself was his guy from the get-go—but the personnel decisions the team has made in the draft and in free agency were to intentionally craft a Patricia-esque team, especially on defense. The team, under Patricia’s leadership, featuring many of Patricia’s players and deploying Patricia’s scheme, has clearly gone backward.