NFL: The Lions under Patricia: A Mentality Issue

The Detroit Lions have made their most important new commitment for the coming season, not for one player, but for the coaching position. Matt Patricia comes after his long-standing role as Defensive Coordinator for the New England Patriots and is supposed to give the whole team the mentality of success in addition to a freshly ordered defense. And: Will there finally be a running game in Detroit?

And once again, the Detroit Lions season ended somewhere in nowhere. The team wavered between bright spots and disappointments and finally found themselves in the league’s no man’s land. Matthew Stafford showed time and time again why he is one of the best quarterbacks in the league, but once again the supporting cast was not good enough to win matches regularly.

It’s the same old Motor City song. Once again, the team from Michigan did not go beyond mediocrity. After Detroit reached the playoffs last year thanks to a new record number of 4th-quarter comebacks in one season to fail once again at the first attempt, the 2017 season was only a balanced one.

Too much for the minds of CEO Bob Quinn and the Michigan staff. Head coach Jim Caldwell had to pack his bags. His successor should be a man with a profile that radiates a winning mentality. And where better to find such a candidate in the NFL than the New England Patriots?

After six years as a defensive coordinator for the most successful franchise in the current NFL era, Matt Patricia took on the challenge of leading an NFL team himself. The overall objective of the commitment seems clear. Lions are finally set to play in the playoffs of successful football.

Patricia, during his time as Patriots Coordinator, has claimed eleven play-off victories since 2012, some of them with outstanding defensive performances. By comparison, his new franchise has been waiting for 28 years for a victory after the Regular Season.

Patricia has a franchise quarterback for this task, a broad secondary and even the backfield and offensive line finally offer reason for optimism. The wide receiver corps is led by Marvin Jones and Golden Tate. In the defensive line, star-end Ezekiel Ansah will play the coming season under the franchise day and will want his value to skyrocket in view of the next free agency.

The mentality and work ethic is to be overhauled from now on, Patricia set a tone at his new workplace from the very beginning that not all players should like. Sending his players to run after making mistakes as a punishment, a columnist in Detroit recently even believed that Patricia was in danger of losing her ties to the players of his new team.

But you don’t lose them in the NFL if you win games. And in this discipline the Patriots were not so bad at last. So the Lions want to go the way of the patriots. Not only in terms of training hardness, but also in terms of public relations.

Cornerback Darius Slay recently denied any statement about the team and merely referred to Head Coach Patricia: “He expressly warned us,” said Slay about the new patriot-like secrecy methods at the Lions. “They’re pretty fucking strict!”

His players should first and foremost do their job and that’s what Patricia thinks they can best concentrate on when they practically transform themselves into non-talking robots. A way that the NFL and the fans in Detroit probably don’t like so much, but if the results only approximate to patriot-like trains, then this will surely be bearable.

Similarly, Patricia’s defense in New England last year finished penultimate according to Football Outsiders’ metrics. Especially in the decisive final phase of the season the badly started defense of the Pats reminded of those from previous years and allowed for yards, but few points.

Above all, they were convincing as a team when it came to aggression. The Patriots collected the seventh-best score in the league with 42 sacks in the past season, but did not represent a single player who individually collected more than 6.5. The supposedly best linebacker, Dont’a Hightower, also missed the last eleven games of the season due to injury. The Lions in direct comparison: Only 35 bags (20th place).

Lions will have a much more flexible defense in the coming season, which will not consistently build on a four-men front as so often in the past. Already in the first open practice units and the minicamps Patricia indicated formations with five or more defensive backs on the field. A picture Patriots fans can well remember.

Few teams have such a good and broad secondary as Detroit, which should make it easy for Patricia to bet on many fast formations. In addition to the Cornerbacks Slay, Nevin Lawson, Teez Tabor, Jamal Agnew and DeShawn Shead, the Safeties Glover Quin, Quandre Diggs, Tavon Wilson, Tracy Walker and Miles Killebrew will also see plenty of playing time.

Looking for more comparisons between the upcoming Lions Defense and the Patriots of recent years, Star Defense End Ansah is likely to play a role similar to that of Trey Flowers. Ansah will then be able to play from his most natural position: outside the opposing offensive tackle.

Ansah will be one of the personalities that will be under special focus this season anyway. After the deadline for long-term contracts for players under the franchise day, Lions risk losing the star, who sees $17.1 million in guarantees this season, almost without value.

Lions, on the other hand, have little to lose in one discipline: their running game. On the offensive side Stafford was able to perform as he wanted in the last years, he received almost no support on the ground. Since Reggie Bush in November 2013, there has been no Lions running back that has run for more than 100 yards in a game.

Last season there was no team that had fewer yards per run, fewer rushing yards per game and less success in short yardage situations. In fact, the Lions were so bad in these areas that they hardly tried to really attack through the running game later in the season.

In 3rd- or 4th-down situations for less than 3 yards to the first down, they only ran 16 times, but instead looked for the way over the pass 26 times. Detroit fit almost twice as often in short yardage situations. And it doesn’t get any better: Of the 16 running attempts in these situations, only seven have led to success. That’s less than 50 percent. Unbelievable!

Bob Quinn obviously had enough of it, so the Lions invested twice in the off-season. While back-to-back super-bowl winner LeGarrette Blount came via Free Agency, Kerryon Johnson was chosen as the draft winner to solve the problems for offensive coordinator Jim Bob Cooter in the long term. In addition to Blount and Johnson, Theo Riddick and Ameer Abdullah will continue to be available.

Cooter lets the Lions’ backfield essentially play three roles. A first Rusher, who gets almost half of the Carries. A third down receiving specialist who receives more targets than rushes and a backup with limited play time.

I understand Rookie Johnson will start directly in the role of lead-back, but Blount will also receive many touches. Blount, however, is hampered by the lack of receiving capabilities. He’s had 21 receptions in the last three years. Johnson had 24 targets for Auburn last season alone.

The easiest role to assign is the position of Riddick. He has already received 62 percent of the targets for running backs last season and will continue to take the role of receiving specialist, while it will probably be difficult for Abdullah to see snaps in the offense.

Rookie Frank Ragnow will also receive a lot of attention right from the start. The new center must upgrade a line that finished last in 2017 in Adjusted Line Yards and Power Success and penultimate in the Stuffed category.

These are disciplines in which not only the lack of talent led to the devastating results, but probably also the work during the week. And this work will certainly look different under the Lions’ new march route. This can already be felt in the tone of Patricia. In any case, rookie running back Johnson was surprised: “These are professional athletes,” said the 21-year-old about how the players are treated. “These men are 30, 35, 25 years old.”

If the mentality of players at this age is to be worked on, then such a tone is obviously necessary. No one will know better than someone who has worked so successfully under these conditions as Patricia has in the last six years under Bill Belichick with the Patriots.

Patricia is to transfer the winning mentality of the Patriots to Detroit. For a franchise that has been waiting for a play-off victory since 1991, the way this happens can ultimately make no difference. However, if the head coach cannot win despite his methods, he should actually run the risk of losing his team early on.

Transferring the Patriots mentality to another franchise is a challenge that other ex-coordinators from the Belichick regime tried in vain before Patricia. If the hard pace does not lead to the hoped-for success, there will be no acceptance. In the case of Patricia, too. It is not for nothing that Belichick’s methods are only popular because they produce results.