Darius Slay was traded by the Detroit Lions to the Philadelphia Eagles Thursday. However, the three-time Pro Bowl defensive back told the Detroit Free Press trouble had brewed between coach Matt Patricia and himself since an incident in 2018:
“He told me in front of the whole team, in the team meeting room, showed clips of me in practice getting a ball caught on me or so in practice,” Slay said. “I posted a picture (of a wide receiver on social media), and he told me, stop sucking this man’s private. So I’m like, ‘Whoa.’ I’m like, ‘Hold up.’ Where I’m from, that don’t fly. Cause I wouldn’t say that to him. I wouldn’t say to him to stop you know what to Bill Belichick. I wouldn’t do that. That’s just not me as a man. That’s disrespectful to me and so from there on it was done with.”
The paper said a second Lion confirmed the incident. Patricia responded with a statement:
“Over the last two seasons, Darius and I have had multiple conversations in private that I believed were constructive and satisfactory,” the statement read. “My discussions with athletes are confidential and I won’t comment on anything discussed with our players in a team meeting. I appreciate his hard work and wish he and his family all the success in Philadelphia.”
After the meeting, Slay said former Lions running backs coach David Walker approached him and said Patricia was trying to make a broader point about staying off social media.
“I was real teary-eyed because I got real, real mad and he was like, ‘Slay, man, he’s just trying to … set the tone for the team that some stuff don’t go. He don’t like social media so he trying to post it, make it calm social media down,’ cause a lot of us like social media,” Slay said. “I said, man, I wasn’t trying to hear that because of the fact that I’m a grown man, he’s a grown man. Like I said, I wasn’t saying nothing like that to him to disrespect him like that. I wasn’t trying to disrespect that man in no way because I respect him as a man. But I felt there was no mutual respect as a man but he respect me as a player.”
Slay said the relationship with his coach never was the same after the 2018 incident.
“Bringing Matty P in with me with how he approached me and said that to me in front of the whole team, it was real embarrassing and I just ain’t appreciate that and that’s where we fell off and that’s where we’re going to always be,” Slay said. … “I had to get out. I needed a fresh start.”