If the details of Darius Slay's beef with Matt Patricia came as a surprise, Glover Quin wasn't among those caught off guard. Quin knew his former teammate had some things to get off his chest.
Sure enough, when Slay got word he'd been traded to the Eagles, he called Quin to give him a heads-up.
"He called me the night before the trade broke, he called me (around midnight) and was like, 'I got traded to the Eagles, man. I’m gone, I’m out of there. I can’t wait till tomorrow, man, I’ma let him have it.' So I already knew it was coming," said Quin. "Did I know he was going to put my name into it? No, I did not."
Slay didn't hold back. In recalling the incident with Patricia, he told the Free Press "there’s no telling what could have happened" had Quin not been sitting next to him at the time. Quin, the even-keel captain, calmed Slay down before things could escalate.
In hindsight, Quin sometimes wishes he had let Slay go.
"We were in a team meeting when that stuff happened. When (Patricia) said it, Slay was really upset. He wanted to make a scene right there, and some days I wish I would’ve let him," said Quin. "But at the moment I was like, there’s a better way that we can do this, that we can deal with it. That’s kind of how it happened."
"We were changing the perception for the Detroit Lions, and then all of sudden Matt Patricia comes in and feels like, I gotta change the whole culture," said Quin. "And we’re like, 'You don’t have to change the culture. The culture is good. They just maybe want you to get us over the hump.' ...
"Coach Patricia came in and tore it all down and a lot of the guys didn’t really want to buy into what he was teaching because of the way he presented it. His attitude, his persona, his arrogance, things like that made people not really want to buy into it. That was the disconnect."