Detroit Lions: Despite appearances, defense is not dead yet

The Detroit Lions’ Matt Patricia is a defensive head coach in a league that has become geared towards offense. So how important is defense in today’s NFL?

The Detroit Lions aren’t the only team at home watching now. The field has been narrowed down to just two teams, while the rest of the league and their fans are left out in the cold.

This season the Lions didn’t come close to matching the hype that surrounded them locally last offseason. The expectations were very high after barely missing the playoffs last season and the hiring of Matt Patricia.

Patricia was very highly regarded as the New England Patriots defensive coordinator and considered one of the hottest candidates for a head coaching position.

Unfortunately hype didn’t meet reality as the franchise had more roster turnover than expected, took almost the whole season to assimilate Patricia’s defense and despite the vast improvement of the Lions ground game, the offense tailed off horribly led by a very noticeably poor season by Matthew Stafford.

All in all it was a recipe for disaster and that’s exactly what the season became.

But now the Lions have started the process of building towards next year as they have parted ways with former offensive coordinator Jim Bob Cooter and hired Darrell Bevell to replace him.

Along with the evaluation of the rest of the coaching staff that could have more change still, Patricia and general manager Bob Quinn are preparing for free agency and the draft in a effort to improve their talent level as they build towards next season.

The one thing that the Lions truly were unable to do this season was create an identity for themselves. The assumption both from the hiring of a defensive head coach along with everything that Matt Patricia was preaching, was that the Lions would be a tough, physical team.

Not only on defense, but running the ball as well since they had used most of their resources last offseason to help the ground game.

Instead they struggled in all facets of the game. Now we are facing an offseason where the Lions have plenty of needs to fill on both sides of the ball, but the assumption is that the defense will be getting the biggest boost.

Which leads us to this question; as the NFL has openly worked to become an offensive league, how important is defense anymore?