The Detroit Lions won on Sunday, beating the visiting Washington Football Team 30-27 when Matt Prater’s 59-yard field goal carved through the Ford Field uprights as time expired. The thrill of the last-second victory is nice, but it should not obscure the larger fact that the Lions nearly blew a 24-3 lead against the NFL’s 30th-ranked offense.
Even in victory, head coach Matt Patricia somehow managed to suck the joy out of winning. That’s the Detroit Lions of his making.
It’s certainly not fair to pin the Washington comeback all on Patricia. The officiating curiously aided the road team. There were dropped passes (hello Quintez Cephus) and missed defensive assignments (hello Jahlani Tavai). But the buck stops at Patricia, as he often reminds his players. And the passivity in play-calling, the lack of disciplined play from his defense, the too-cautious decisions on both sides of the ball schematically probably should have cost Patricia another humiliating loss.
The final outcome should not excuse the poor execution, poor handling of early success, and poor response to the Football Team seizing momentum. Those are all things Patricia must control as the head coach. They failed in every single aspect, only to get bailed out by Washington simply being even worse.
It’s an unsavory path to a 4-5 record, holding off a rally from a 2-7 Football Team playing its third-string QB, Alex Smith, making his first start in almost exactly two years. Smith set a career-high in passing yards with 390. Much of it came against either passively, intentionally soft or simply blown coverages by his linebackers and secondary.
Blowing big leads is old hat for Patricia. It’s what he’s renowned for now, more even than being a rocket scientist. Just because the outcome against a very bad Washington team went his way doesn’t let Patricia’s poor coaching job and failure to adapt to prior mistakes off the hook. It shouldn’t for the fans and it shouldn’t for owner Sheila Ford Hamp, either.