Detroit Lions: For better or worse, it’s time for the Matt Patricia era

The truth is that it is a two-part question. Generally speaking, the defenses are ahead of the offenses in the exhibition season. The fact that the offense wasn’t clicking on all cylinders really isn’t a concern to me.

I expect they will mesh quickly enough and Lions fans will be treated to much of what they expected from this offense.

Kerryon Johnson in his limited playing time during the preseason demonstrated he could do everything at a high level. The offensive line has all the pieces needed to be good, provided they stay healthy. LeGarrette Blount and Theo Riddick add more effective weapons to the backfield and Matthew Stafford and his receivers return mostly intact except for the departure of tight end Eric Ebron.

While there are certainly some questions marks about the offensive line and tight ends, the positives outweigh them. If healthy, this offense will only pick up steam as the season rolls along and be very difficult for opposing defenses to deal with.

The real concerns are on the defensive side of the ball.

The fact that they gave up points playing a ‘vanilla’ defense during the exhibition season isn’t really a huge concern. While we would all love the defense to always be stingy and impossible to score on, that’s an unrealistic expectation.

The concerns came from how sloppy and undisciplined they were at just executing the fundamentals of playing defense. They missed tackles, they couldn’t set the edge to save their lives and had trouble pressuring opposing quarterbacks.

Then came the last minute purging of players as the Lions picked up a handful of final cuts from other teams to plug into their defensive front seven while cutting many of the final links to last years’ front seven.

This meant about a week for the new arrivals to learn a complex defensive system that many players hadn’t mastered after a full offseason.

Talk about high anxiety.