Detroit Lions: Exorcising 60 years of lousy football isn’t easy

On the surface, it seems like ‘how long’ should be a moot point. After all, NFL teams have found ways to turn their fortunes around pretty quickly for a while. You really have to go back to the 1980’s or 70’s for the standard turnaround of a franchise to be longer than a couple of seasons.

Yet here in Detroit things work a little differently.

While other NFL cities are working in the space age, we here in Detroit are in the stone age. Sort of ironic considering how important the ‘wheel’ was to its growth of the Motor City.

The Lions had a team that seemed on the verge of being able to contend over the last few seasons, but Jim Caldwell’s inability to get them over the hump allowed general manager Bob Quinn the opportunity to send him packing and bring in his own choice, Matt Patricia, to coach this team.

However, instead of completing the journey and leading the Lions to a championship, much less the playoffs, it would seem this team has taken a drastic step backward.

One might even say they have gone into complete re-build mode. Ironic for a team that Bob Quinn said was underachieving during Jim Caldwell’s reign.

So the real question is how long will it take Bob Quinn and Matt Patricia to tear down what Quinn believed to be a playoff team and re-build it into an actual playoff team? Despite the expectations being high.

This is the conundrum that the fans are facing. The double-talk about the expectations being high, but they are clearly in a rebuilding mode and, whether they want to hear it or not, the effort has not been quite what you would expect from a team that is ‘all on board’ with Patricia’s vision of what he wants this team to be.

Not to mention what seems to be a complete lack of urgency.

What does all that mean? It means the Lions are rebuilding and don’t want to publicly admit it. Sure that wouldn’t be the message the fan base wants to hear, but it would justify what has happened so far this season much more than speeches about how the coaching staff needs to do a better job.

Which, by the way, isn’t exactly wrong either.

Both Jim Bob Cooter and Paul Pasqualoni have been under fire of late and for good reason. The Lions defense actually did a pretty good job against the run last week in Chicago, but their secondary left Bears receivers open like they had the plague.

The result; Bears quarterback Mitch Trubisky passed for a career-high 355 yards. And the vast majority of that was in the first three quarters when the game was decided.

Meanwhile, the offense continues to be unimaginative, unproductive and unbearable to watch.

Yeah, the ad slogan for this season should have been, ‘come for the poor play and stay for the humiliation.’ In other words; truth in advertising.