Jets Say They Knew All the Lions Plays and the Word Out of Detroit is Things are BAD for Matt Patricia
When you’re you in your first game as a head coach, your team is facing the youngest quarterback to start in 48 years, you give up 48 points, 31 of them just in the 3rd quarter, counting the Super Bowl you’ve surrendered 40+ points in your last two games including 89 in a span of just 98 minutes AND you’re throwing out body language like that, the Internet is going to be an ugly, nightmarish hellscape for you. Including, though not limited to, this:
And yet, while it doesn’t seem possible, since last night it’s actually gotten worse for Matt Patricia.
The New York Jets intercepted five passes in a game for the first time in 19 years, and they believe it’s because they knew what was coming.
“We were calling out their plays as he was getting up to the line,” linebacker Darron Lee said of quarterback Matthew Stafford, who was intercepted four times in the Detroit Lions’ 48-17 loss at Ford Field.
“We knew his signals,” Lee said. “We knew everything. That’s just preparation as a defense. … It seemed like we were in his head as a defense.”
Ouch. That’s gonna leave a mark. Nothing screams “We weren’t ready to play” like a Todd Bowles (10-22 over the last two seasons) defense reading your offense like they’ve been illegally videotaping your practices.
Though upon further review, maybe things didn’t get bad for Patricia last night or this morning. His problems might not have begun with Sam Darnold throwing just four incompletions after his first play Pick-6. Because the talk around the league is that Matt Patricia lost his locker room almost from Day 1, hasn’t gotten it back and likely never will.
And it’s pretty much been happening in front of us. The Lions players disrespect for their coach has been hiding in plain sight. Back in June I ripped the Detroit football media new buttholes for being outraged at the idea Patricia was making him players run as punishment for screwing up in practice. That was after reading this in the Free Press:
The Detroit Lions’ rookie coach wants things done his way. And his way means running as punishment. Lots and lots of running.
That’s not likely to endear him to his players, many of who whom are experienced professionals who don’t need or care to be treated like junior varsity tryout players. …
Patricia’s tactic smacked of amateurism and even though it was generally downplayed as an innocuous slap on the wrist, I can guarantee you most players don’t care for it.
For one, it’s insulting at this level.
For another, it’s a waste of time.
Imagine you’re a roster-bubble player and you’re having a good practice and ready for your next rep when Patricia decides to get mad and makes everyone run, thereby cancelling one of your reps. How exactly does that help anyone? The usual way players are corrected is they get chewed out by their position coaches. …
The running, on its own, won’t lose players for Patricia. But you have to assume if he’s using these tactics in front of reporters, he could be using others privately that are equally distasteful to players.
Right. Because why would a new coach come in, try a new approach by adding a little mental and physical discipline and mess up such a good thing? I mean, the way the Lions have been doing it since Bobby Layne led them to that last title back in 1957 has been working out swell. So why change now?
But Patricia’s new way of doing business clearly hasn’t gone over with his veterans. Whether he just did a terrible job of reading the room, or he’s simply not head coaching material, or there’s just a toxic culture within that franchise that is resistant to an approach of tough discipline, only the guys inside the walls of the place can say for sure. But what everyone else around the NFL is beginning to say is that it’s bad for Matt Patricia in Detroit and only getting worse. And goes way deeper than just getting humiliated in your home opener by a quarterback who wasn’t old enough to legally walk into a bar last Memorial Day. It’s too bad because Patricia is a Barstool guy and obviously a brilliant mind and deserved this shot at a head coaching gig. But right now, from the outside looking in, it seems like the only coach in the league who could pass for a pirate captain has got a full scale mutiny on his hands. Sad.