It wasn’t always like this. Between the angst that came at the start and the anger we’re left with now, there was hope for Matt Patricia. There was legitimate promise for his defense. There was evidence of the game-planning guru and the sideline savant the Lions thought they were getting from New England. And it wasn’t all that long ago.
Something clicked in the second half of 2018. Maybe it was the result of a few cushy matchups, but it looked like Patricia’s defensive vision was taking shape. On all three levels -- especially up front, especially on the interior -- the numbers were improving. The Lions finished 10th in the NFL in total defense, their best finish since 2014.
Then they went out and signed Trey Flowers and Justin Coleman and Mike Daniels, and we really started to believe. And then they travelled to Arizona for the season-opener and suffocated the Cardinals through three quarters. It feels like we all woke up from a dream in the fourth, the kind that fades further from memory the harder you try to recall it.
This is a nightmare now.
The Lions were so bad on defense last season, despite all those hefty investments, they nearly broke franchise records for futility. They gave up the most passing yards in the league and the second most yards overall – and a whole bunch of fourth-quarter leads in the process. Ownership brought back Patricia and Bob Quinn with the expectation things would change.
They have. Now the Lions can’t stop the run. They’ve surrendered more than 400 rushing yards through the first two games. That puts them in a league of their own. Surrendered. With respect to the team’s effort, it feels like the right word. The Lions are giving up ground without a fight.
What else has changed? Patricia hired Cory Undlin to take over the defense from Paul Pasqualoni, one pal replacing the other. We were led to believe Undlin would bring some new twists to Patricia’s scheme. But the Lions are running the same old defense they did last year, discernible by a feeble pass rush and leaky man coverage.
Take it from Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury, who was asked Wednesday how the defense he saw in 2019 compares to the one his team will see Sunday in Phoenix.
“It looks very similar to me to what they’ve been doing,” Klingsbury said.
Klingsbury’s point, if we’re being fair, was that Detroit’s approach remains the same: take away the opponent’s strengths. He went on to praise Patricia for coming up with a new plan each week. “Back in New England,” Klinsbury said, “he was a tremendous defensive mind.” And back in New England, if we’re being fair, Patricia was in Bill Belichick’s cocoon.
Nothing has changed at all. The Lions overhauled their defense in the offseason, a project that included shipping their only Pro-Bowler out of town, and the product so far is just as ugly. Patricia insists there are wrinkles to his scheme that aren’t evident to the untrained eye. That would be great if there were wrinkles to the results.
“I would say there are some changes in there that are a little bit different and hopefully some of that isn’t that obvious to the eye that’s breaking down the film,” Patricia said. “Some situations that we had that might have been a problem last year are maybe handled a little bit differently, which will help us this year.”
In his own world, Patricia is a step ahead. The numbers say the Lions play more man coverage than any team in the NFL. Patricia says that’s because they’re so good at disguising when they’re in zone. The numbers say the Lions rarely rush more than four. Patricia seems to think he can scheme his way around it. We’re talking about pressuring the quarterback. It's like inventing new ways to drink water.
Patricia was asked about Klingsbury’s assessment of Detroit’s defense, that it doesn't seem different from last year. He smiled, slyly, like his plan was working. Like he’s got Klingsbury and the Cardinals right where he wants them, like the meltdowns against the Bears and the Packers are part of a larger ploy that the rest of us will see soon enough.
“There are differences in our defense,” he said. “I think the biggest thing for us, obviously the personnel is a little different, some of the players that are out on the field are a little different. I think part of it for us is we’re still trying to find out, what do those guys do well and what do they do consistent?”
No, we can’t abide that. Patricia and Quinn imported Jamie Collins, Duron Harmon and Danny Shelton this year – one Patriot for each level of the defense – precisely because they knew what those players ‘did well’ and ‘did consistent.’ They imported Flowers and Coleman last year for the same reason. And they’ve spent the past three years drafting players ostensibly suited for Patricia’s defense.
This was the year it was supposed to come together. No offseason program? This was touted as an advantage for the Lions because they had so many players familiar with the defensive scheme. Injuries in the secondary? This wouldn’t be a problem if the third overall pick was as ready for the NFL as Detroit believed he was. Patricia and his defense are out of alibis. The poor results are the product of a poor plan.
“The defense always tends to change and morph based on the players we have out there, and how do we put them in the best position possible to make some plays?” he said Wednesday. “We’re still very early in that stage with us defensively.”
Since coming to Detroit, it feels like Patricia has operated in reverse. He’s gone searching for very specific players to fill very specific roles in a defense that only he seems to grasp. And he’s discarded other players -- good players -- who aren't the perfect match. The defense surged in 2018 largely because of the arrival of Damon Harrison. Snacks snuffed out the run and everything else fell into place.
But Harrison wasn’t all that comfortable. Patricia continued to implement defensive techniques that ran counter to everything Snacks knew. In 2019, Harrison said, “it kind of came back to bite me in the ass.” Soon he was ‘hell-bent’ on getting out of Detroit. He got his wish at the end of the season when the Lions released him. They brought in Shelton as the solution, and around and around we go.
It wasn’t always like this. But the encroaching truth is that this is what it is, a dream sinking further into a nightmare one game at a time.