Is the Detroit Lions’ chess game improving under Matt Patricia?

One friend of mine said that watching the Lions is like, ‘watching Old Yeller 16 time a season.’ His reasoning was how this franchise rips out the hearts of its fans on a weekly basis and that the only answer would seem to involve a shotgun.

Yet Matt Patricia was one of the reasons the New England Patriots were ahead of the curve. The former rocket scientist helped change how even Bill Belichick ran the organization. Yet for all his innovative contributions to the Patriots, he has found himself propelled back to the stone age with the Lions.

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Former Lions linebacker Kyle Van Noy has made the same journey that Matt Patricia did but in reverse. He stepped out of the dark ages into the light of the ‘Patriot Way’.

Or Van Noy put it himself, ‘I finally get to play chess and not checkers, baby’.

So in the midst of how much this franchise has been behind the rest of the league, the question is simple; is there really hope for this miserable and cursed team?

Let’s start with the fact that Matt Patricia was the man who transformed Van Noy from a useless player in Detroit to an impact player on a championship team. Something many of Patricia’s former players have credited him with.

Next, Bob Quinn has Matt Patricia’s shopping list and will follow it as closely as possible. The one thing we can say about this regime that has not been the case more often than not in the past is that both Quinn and Patricia are on the same page.

They both know how each other like to operate and they both grade players out in the same way. So when Patricia says he wants a cornerback that fits his system, Quinn knows exactly what Patricia is asking for.

Now that Matt Patricia has corrected one of his own mistakes which helped keep the Lions behind the eight ball this season with the firing of former offensive coordinator Jim Bob Cooter and replacing him with Darrell Bevell, he has belatedly done what Quinn took two years to do himself; he hired his own hand-picked choice, which theory will tell you increases his odds of success.

The 2019 Detroit Lions may not win the Super Bowl, but they should play much closer to the ideal level of play that Matt Patricia envisioned when he took the job a year ago. Nothing worthwhile ever comes easy and turning around a franchise that has been trailing the rest of the league for 60 years like the Lions is certainly no exception.