Head coach: Matt Patricia. I like the third-year head man. However, do yourself a favor and toss the phrase "Matt Patricia culture change" into Google. The third headline from the top is, "Matt Patricia trying to change Lions' culture with more physicality." That story is from 2018. The second headline from the top: "Lions' Matt Patricia continues culture change away from Jim Caldwell era." That one's from 2019. And finally, the top headline: "SI All Lions Roundtable: Culture Change Underway for Lions." That's from this past March. It just seems like Patricia has been given an awfully long time to -- say it with me now -- change the culture. It's like hiring a contractor. And he has to take the existing structure all the way down to the studs and basically start over. But you hired the guy two-and-a-half years ago. You were expecting to see some progress in the build at some point, but instead, there is merely a pile of rubble where your new office was supposed to be.
Obviously, Detroit caught some bad breaks early on in the 2019 campaign. I even wrote a column in mid-October highlighting the Lions' profoundly bad luck. And then they lost Stafford for the entire second half of the season. At the end of the day, the team lost 12 of its final 13 games and finished dead last in the NFC North for the second straight season. Some of that has to fall on coaching.
Let's compare Patricia to another defensive branch off the Bill Belichick tree. Brian Flores, who had taken over the defensive play-calling duties from Patricia in New England, was hired last year as the head coach of a Dolphins team at the outset of a dismantle/rebuild. And while Miami's front office was busy trading talent for future draft currency, Flores fielded a team that was competitive, a lot of fun to watch and kind of ended the Patriots dynasty under Tom Brady by shocking them in the season finale. Sure, the Fins went just 5-11, but they improved over the course of the year. In December, people were talking up Flores as Coach of the Year material for clearly getting the most out of an overmatched roster.
The 2019 Lions didn't manage many moral victories, much less real wins. Patricia's 9-22-1 through his first two seasons in the big chair. Jim Caldwell, the man Patricia replaced, averaged nine wins per season in Detroit. So, um, how's that culture change going?
"break" - Google News
July 09, 2020 at 01:14AM
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State of the Franchise: Make-or-break year for current Lions regime - NFL.com
"break" - Google News
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