Another game and another loss for Matt Patricia’s Detroit Lions as they dropped a heartbreaker to the Green Bay Packers 42-21 moving the former New England defensive coordinator’s head coaching record in Detroit to an eye-gouging 9-26-1.
Sunday’s loss also set new achievements in ultimate futility for the Lions as they not only dropped 11 straight games stemming from last season, but they also became the first team in NFL history to lose four straight games after blowing a double-digit lead.
Needless to say, it’s not looking good for Matt Patricia, and general manager Bob Quinn whose had ample time to come in, develop a front office and on-field staff that would turn shit around for the first time in well… ever.
And, under normal circumstances, Quinn and Patricia would probably already have been given the boot but we’re hardly dealing with a set of “normal” circumstances considering anything “normal” with the Lions is anything abnormal.
So is a Patricia firing right around the corner then? Not likely if you ask Peter King.
Peter King’s Football Morning in America:
It’s Sept. 21, and Matt Patricia looks done already. The Lions have lost 11 in a row, and they’re the worst finishers since 2019 Edwin Diaz. 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. Predictably, 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 next two weeks likely won’t help. 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.
So what is it with the Lions, their blind loyalty and knack for ruining the Sunday’s of their fans?
As much as Lions fans probably don’t want to hear this, they are kinda/sorta under new ownership with Sheila Ford-Hamp taking over for her Mom so there’s no telling how she’s going to run things given those traditional sets of Lions “circumstances”. So I guess it may not be totally fair to say she’s giving Quinn and/or Patricia any kind of blind loyalty. If they’re both around at the end of the season in which the Lions didn’t make it to the postseason then lambast her blind loyalty all you want.
But as far as Quinn goes, the reason why he’s not going to fire Patricia now is he knows that the head coach’s success is his one and only shot at keeping his own job. If Patricia fails then Quinn fails and bringing on a new head coach after week two is waiving the white flag on a make or break season for yourself. Likewise, it was the same reason you couldn’t buy into any rumors that mentioned the Lions trading Matthew Stafford this past offseason. Stafford was and continues to provide the best opportunity for this team to win for a GM and a Head Coach whose football lives depend on it.