How did Matt Patricia’s predecessors do in their coaching debuts?

Matt Patricia – 2018

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What he inherited: A stabilized franchise with three winning records (two playoff appearances) in the past four seasons.

Expectations Level: Patricia isn’t in a very enviable spot at the moment. It’s one thing for a rookie head coach to take over a 4-12 team.

Taking a decent/good team and turning them into real contenders is a different type of challenge. It’s complicated, but it’s simple. To justify his hiring, Patricia needs to outperform Jim Caldwell’s on-field results.

The problem is, the roster doesn’t seem any better than any of Caldwell’s teams, and the rest of the already-tough NFC North has also improved.

Then there’s the fact that Patricia has never been a head coach, and the preseason really didn’t go very well by any measure.

Catch-22? Ten wins is apparently the new expectation in Detroit, but there doesn’t seem to be many people anywhere else who expect ten wins from the Lions in 2018. Getting past the Jets in Week 1 would only be the start, but it would be a start. On the other side of that, a loss at home to a last place team with a rookie quarterback…where do you go from there?

First Game: Monday, September 10th vs New York Jets.