“It’s Sept. 21, and Matt Patricia looks done already.”
That was the opening line in Peter King’s section about the Detroit Lions from his latest Football Morning in America column. And he’s not wrong.
“The Lions have lost 11 in a row, and they’re the worst finishers since 2019 Edwin Diaz,” King said. “In Week 1, they blew a 17-point fourth-quarter lead and lost to the Mitchell Trubisky Bears. In Week 2, they blew an early 14-3 lead in Green Bay and lost by 21.”
Not only have the Lions lost 11 in a row under Patricia, but they are the first team in NFL history to blow double-digit leads in four consecutive games.
To take it a step further, through his first 34 games, Patricia (9-24-1) has a worse record than Rod Marinelli (10-24), Jim Schwartz (10-24, who inherited an 0-16 team), and Jim Caldwell (19-15).
“Predictably,” King continued, “all the Lions stuck by their coach in the aftermath, but what are they going to say? The most troublesome thing about the Lions is that Patricia was considered a brilliant defensive mind and tactician in New England, and he just can’t get the defense right in Detroit.”
The Lions approach to defense has been maddening. They struggle to get pressure on the quarterback, yet preach about its importance. The play more man coverage than any team in the NFL, yet are bad at it, as our college Doug Farrar explained at Touchdown Wire. And his approach to stopping the run and subsequent decisions on which players to use on the field — why are they using Will Harris over Tracy Walker? — seem misguided.
“The next two weeks likely won’t help,” King concluded. “Detroit is at the 2-0 Cardinals, with the 1-0 Saints (playing tonight) coming to Detroit in Week 4. Then Detroit has its bye. There’s no way the franchise would fire him at 0-4 this year and 9-26-1 in his tenure, is there? Doubtful, but clearly, Patricia doesn’t have a lot of time to save his job, not when the Cleveland Browns have five more wins than Patricia since opening day 2018.”
King is right and those looking for a coaching change at the bye are probably going to be disappointed. But this is the third year in a row the team has significantly underperformed, and the fact that they are repeating the same mistakes over and over, point to the problem being at the top.