Lions Counterpoint: What Should The Team Do With Matt Patricia?
By Jon Poole
Colton continues;
The Lions benefitted from an easy schedule in 2014 and won some close games they shouldn’t have won, but still deserved a playoff berth based on their SRS. The next season, those 11 wins came back to bite them, earning the team a stricter schedule, which they still turned into a playoff-worthy SRS, finishing sixth in the conference.
In 2016, a playoff year, mind you, the team took a significant step back. But they not only recovered for their third winning season in four years but had *their best SRS season* under Caldwell, picking up the same number of wins with a more difficult schedule despite missing the playoffs.
According to the numbers, the Lions were a top-six NFC team (read: deserving of a playoff berth) twice under Caldwell and played their best football in the season he got fired.
This reminds me of Pistons fans clamoring to make it in as the 8th seed and get swept every single season. That was Caldwell in Detroit still even after four years. I’ll pass playoff fringe purgatory and lose some games in the now to build a real contender later.
In the NFL, there are contenders and pretenders, and there are always going to be one or two out of five or six middling pretender teams that will back into the playoffs in each conference that has no business being there competitively. That was the Lions’ ceiling under Caldwell, if you’re happy with that, we’re not alike, and that’s ok.
Let’s use Colton’s favorite SRS stat and look at all the teams that made it to their conference championships in the years under Caldwell. (Just a little context for the readers, SRS normally tops and bottoms out at around +10 and -10 for the best and worst in the league each season)
- 2014: Seattle = 9.5, Green Bay = 8.3, Indianapolis = 4.4, New England = 10.9 … Lions = 2.1
- 2015: Arizona = 12.3, Carolina = 8.1, New England = 7.0, Denver = 5.8 … Lions = -0.2 (yes, that’s a negative sign)
- 2016: Atlanta = 8.5, Green Bay = 2.8, New England = 9.3, Pittsburgh = 4.7 … Lions = -1.4 (yes, that’s a negative sign)
- 2017: Philadelphia = 9.4, Minnesota = 9.1, New England = 8.9, Jacksonville = 6.5 … Lions = 2.7
Context is everything, right? Yes, the Lions snuck in the playoffs due to a weak strength of schedule. That was exactly my point. The Lions had a (-0.4) strength of schedule in 2014 and (-0.6) in 2016, the 3rd easiest strength of schedule in the NFC.
Wins against bad teams weren’t the facade, just the result of playing a weak schedule with Matthew Stafford as your quarterback. Awww, sudden memories of the comeback cats…
The facade was that the Caldwell Lions had as much of a shot as other 11 and 9 wins teams in the league contending in the playoffs, not that could mathematically make with a weak SOS. They had no shot competitively, which they proved almost every single time they played a team with a winning record.